Who is Ghislaine Maxwell?

Ghislaine was famous for mixing with Presidents, billionaires and royalty, in particular Prince Andrew. Rich men and women loved her. ‘Naughty, funny and very worldly’, she was the go-to guest to give a party sparkle. In her youth she seemed destined to a life as heiress to a billionaire fortune until her father died in 1991 in a blaze of headlines about embezzlement on an industrial scale. Hiding out in New York on a relatively paltry income of $100,000 a year, she became billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s lover within a year. It heralded a remarkable reversal of fortune. She resumed her jet-setting life and would mysteriously amass a fortune of over $30 million, including a grand five-storey town house in New York.

Why is she in the news?

On 2 July 2020 Maxwell was arrested by the FBI in a remote location in Maine where she was hiding with a mobile phone wrapped in tinfoil to avoid detection and reading a book on the crimes of her former lover Epstein. Also present on the property was an ex-military guard. Her lawyers refused to declare her wealth or her marriage to her husband, to whom her fortune had been secretly transferred. They made 114 complaints and requests, including her release on bail to a luxury hotel. A jury found her guilty in December last year of under-age sex felonies committed with Epstein over ten years from 1994-2004, with a maximum sentence of 55 years. The prosecution followed a ‘thin to win strategy’ with a limited number of victims who claimed Maxwell deployed her glamourous demeanour to gain their confidence and molested them. Included was Maria Farmer who had first gone to the FBI and New York police in 1995 about Maxwell’s abuse of her and her 15 year old sister, only to be brushed off until 2019.

Remaining questions

Calls have been made for Ghislaine Maxwell’s fortune to be confiscated as gains made from a criminal enterprise. There is also an outstanding accusation of Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell. She notified the Metropolitan Police that Maxwell and Epstein paid her $15,000 to fly to London and meet with Prince Andrew (an accusation that Buckingham Palace and he have consistently denied and settled in January this year with a payment of up to £12 million without admission of liability). Under Met commissioner prosecution was reviewed three times. After her departure, the Met charged Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey for crimes committed in this country that remained on file. Maxwell’s may be next

(c) Nigel Cawthorne, author of Virginia Giuffre: The Extraordinary Life of the ‘Playtoy’ who Pursued and Ended the Crimes of Millionaires Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein (out in July).