The “French chain” in the Epstein scandal. Prosecutors in Paris reopen a closed investigation after the suicide of a close associate of the American businessman
Jean-Luc Brunel suffered the same death as Epstein, hanging himself in his cell Photo: Handout / AFP / Profimedia
The prosecutor's office in Paris announces on Saturday that it has appointed referring magistrates to analyze the elements likely to involve French citizens following the publication by the US of some documents related to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, reports AFP, taken over by Agerpres.
The prosecutor's office stated that the analysis could target “crimes of various natures, especially of a sexual or financial nature”. The institution intends to carry out “a full re-analysis of the investigation file” regarding the deceased former model agent Jean-Luc Brunel.
Accused of raping several former models, this Frenchman close to Jeffrey Epstein was charged with raping a minor. He was found hanged in his cell in 2022, before his trial.
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The objective is “to be able to extract any piece likely to be usefully reused in a new investigation”, stated the prosecutor's office, at the request of AFP. The procedure was closed in July 2023 by an order not to start the criminal prosecution, due to the death of Jean-Luc Brunel. “Practically, no other person has been charged in this case,” recalled the prosecutor's office in Paris.
He was alerted in the summer of 2019 by addresses from the Innocence en danger association and by a letter from the Femme et libre association that evokes French complicity in the file regarding Jeffrey Epstein in the USA. A plaintiff has accused Jean-Luc Brunel of raping her in the 1980s, when she was barely an adult and working as a model.
“Investigators synthesized hearings from an American proceeding that revealed that Jean-Luc Brunel was a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein; that he offered modeling jobs to poor young women; that he indulged in sexual acts with underage girls in the USA, in the US Virgin Islands, in Paris and in the south of France,” notes the prosecutor's office.
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Responding to an appeal for witnesses, several women indicated that they attended parties in Paris during which large quantities of alcohol and cocaine were consumed and where several young women were put in contact with Brunel. Some testified to an atmosphere of prostitution and drugs and a climate of sexual violence.
Ten women implicated Jean-Luc Brunel, several saying they were encouraged to drink alcohol and forced to have sex, although some of them were underage, according to the public ministry.
“One of them described Jean-Luc Brunel as the one who sent new girls to Jeffrey Epstein, under the pretext of photo shoots, from Eastern Europe or Latin America,” added the Paris Prosecutor's Office.
