US District Court for the Southern District of New York via Agence France-Presse This undated photo made available by a New York court shows American financier Jeffrey Epstein accompanied by his ex-mistress and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
A New York judge began revealing Wednesday evening the names of people – victims, relatives, alleged accomplices – linked to American financier Jeffrey Epstein accused of sex crimes but who committed suicide in prison in 2019 before being judged.
These revelations from federal justice in Manhattan, which began with the publication of 40 court documents – for a total of a thousand pages – were provided for by a December 18 order from the new judge. Yorkist Loretta Preska and made public the next day.
This legal act is part of defamation proceedings between Jeffrey Epstein's ex-mistress and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison, and an American plaintiff against the couple, Virginia Giuffre.
The judge had listed some 180 people – under numbers and the pseudonym “Doe” – ordering that their identities be “fully” made public “14 days” at the latest after December 18 and 19, either January 2 or 3.
According to the British media Daily News, which revealed the existence of this list, Virginia Giuffre's defamation complaint against Ghislaine Maxwell dates back to 2016 and was settled the following year.
But the newspaper Miami Herald then took civil action to gain access to the file and investigate the Epstein network.
The fallen financier was arrested in 2019.
To justify the revealing of names – including personalities already cited in the press – justice relies on the fact that certain people are easily identifiable in interviews published in recent years.
Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were a couple in the early 1990s before becoming professional collaborators.
The 61-year-old British, French and American ex-socialite was convicted in December 2021 in New York of sex trafficking of minors on behalf of Epstein and sentenced in June 2022 to 20 years 'imprisonment.
The financier, with powerful economic and political networks in the United States and abroad, was himself accused of having sexually assaulted and raped young girls but his suicide by hanging in prison in New York in August 2019 extinguished the public action against him.
In a separate part of this international file, British Prince Andrew, friend of the Maxwell-Epstein pair, sealed an amicable agreement in February 2022 – for 13 million US dollars according to the Daily Telegraph – with Virginia Giuffre, 40, who accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2001 when she was 17.
The disgraced 63-year-old prince disputes the accusations.