According to federal prosecutors, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein participated in a series of mysterious high-dollar transactions that suggest the couple was financially intertwined.
The two traded $ 20 million back and forth between their bank accounts over a five-year period beginning in 2007, according to a memorandum from American lawyers arguing that Maxwell’s financial resources made her a flight risk and that it should be detained without bail.
“There may be a completely innocent explanation, but it’s definitely a sinister data point,” Duncan Levin, a former Brooklyn prosecutor, told CNN about the cash transactions between Maxwell and Epstein.
Maxwell was arrested Thursday on the charge of recruiting and fixing minor girls who she and Epstein allegedly abused. The arrest followed a month-long investigation that led federal law enforcement to a chalet in the New Hampshire forest where Maxwell had been hiding.
According to investigators, Maxwell allegedly maintained a maze of 15 bank accounts, which at one time were worth more than $ 20 million, describing the financial situation of British high society as “opaque and indeterminate,” the New York Times reported.
The source of Epstein’s wealth has long been a mystery. He claimed to manage money for his billionaire friends, but he only has one known client – Victoria’s Secret founder Leslie Wexner, who said he cut ties to Epstein years ago.
Maxwell claimed the two were so financially connected that he should have rights to his wealth in the Virgin Islands, according to a civil lawsuit he filed there after his death in August. In court documents, she claimed that Epstein promised to always support her.
The transactions between 2007 and 2011 suggest that “they had a very close business relationship and that he clearly trusted her with a phenomenal amount of money,” Levin said.
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