France listening to 10 ‘new’ suspected victims of Epstein: Prosecutor

A prosecutor in France has revealed that about 10 new suspected victims have come forward in the European country’s probe into the network of late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaking with the RTL broadcaster, Paris Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said on Sunday that about 20 suspected victims had made themselves known after she, in February, urged potential victims to speak up.

While some were already known to investigators, she said, “new victims come forward, ones we didn’t know at all”.

“There are around 10 of them,” she added, noting, “The choice we’ve made for the time being is to listen to these victims.”

“A certain number of them are abroad, so the investigators have tried to set up meetings to suit when they are able to come to Paris,” the prosecutor said.

Following the release of the cache of files from the investigation into the disgraced financier by the United States Justice Department, France also opened a human trafficking investigation.

French magistrates are seeking to investigate possible offences committed in France or involving French perpetrators who facilitated Epstein’s crimes.

“We have also once again pulled out Mr Epstein’s computers, his telephone records, his address books,” she said, adding that her team would be “making requests for international assistance”.

Epstein died in US prison in August 2019 while facing charges of trafficking underage girls for sex. The next month, French investigators searched Epstein’s luxury apartment in Paris.

Suspected victims already known to investigators included women who had spoken during probes into former European model agency boss Gerald Marie and late model agent Jean-Luc Brunel, reported the AFP news agency.

Fifteen women in March urged France to investigate Marie for possible links to Epstein.

French authorities arrested Brunel in 2020 after allegations that he sexually abused minors and procured victims for Epstein. He was found dead in prison in 2022.

Two former models have told AFP that a modelling scout named Daniel Siad groomed them with the aim of delivering them to Epstein in one case in the 2000s, and Marie in the other case in the 1990s.