Jeffrey Epstein traveled to Russia several times, according to documents released about the notorious sex offender.
Several of the trips took place in the early 2000s. Flight logs show that Epstein traveled to Russia in 2002, among other places, together with former U.S. President Bill Clinton and his later convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
As recently as June 2018, just over a year before his death, Epstein was granted a new three-year business visa to Russia, according to AFP.
Most eye-raising, however, is a visit back in 1998. In a photo geolocated by CNN, Epstein is seen in the closed Russian city of Sarov, the center of Russian nuclear weapons research and closed to everyone without special permission from the FSB security service or the atomic energy agency Rosatom. What he did there is unknown, and the visit has fueled long-standing speculation about links between Epstein and Russian intelligence.
Appealed for Putin meeting
Thousands of pages of the Epstein documents contain references to Putin and Moscow, according to a review by the independent Russian news site Agentstvo. In a 2017 FBI document, a “classified informant” claims that Epstein was Putin’s wealth manager.
The veracity of this claim is impossible to verify, but email conversations between Epstein and several different people at least indicate that the financier had been striving for a personal meeting with Putin for years.
"Let's try to arrange a meeting with Putin," Epstein wrote in 2014 in an email to Norwegian Thorbjørn Jagland, then Secretary General of the Council of Europe.
He repeated the request to Jagland in 2015 and 2018, and also discussed a possible meeting with Putin with several others. There is no known evidence that such a meeting ever took place.
Gave Russia information
Epstein had close ties to several top Russian politicians. Among them is the FSB-trained former deputy economy minister Sergei Belyakov, with whom Epstein met at least five times and had extensive email contact, according to the Russian exile Dossier Center.
“I need a favor,” Epstein wrote to Belyakov in 2015, explaining that a Russian woman was trying to extort money from a billionaire friend, which meant “bad news for everyone involved.”
Belyakov responded with a summary of the woman's activities as an escort. To resolve the problem, he suggested revoking her U.S. visa, wrote The New York Times.
Among Epstein's acquaintances in Russia's top echelons is former UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin, whom Epstein said he had provided with information about Donald Trump.
"Churkin was great. He understood Trump after our conversations," Epstein wrote to Jagland, a former prime minister of Norway, according to Politico in the 2018 email exchange.
Epstein also suggested a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to give Lavrov “insights” about Trump ahead of his meeting with Putin in Helsinki. Jagland responded that he would meet with Lavrov’s assistant the following day and then suggest that the Russians contact Epstein. It is unclear whether that happened.
Young Russian women
In addition to top politicians, the Epstein files are full of references to young women and girls from Russia, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In a 2018 email to Slovakia's then-foreign minister, Epstein claims that girls are Russia's "best export."
In several cases, young Russian women were used to lure in the elite, as is evident in email exchanges between Epstein and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew.
To find the women in question, the financier had an extensive network that helped him, the Epstein documents show. In a series of emails from various so-called “model scouts,” women are suggested to Epstein on a continuous basis. Sometimes they are described as “flowers,” always with emphasis on their looks, bodies, and young age.
It is unclear what they were recruited for. Sometimes they are described as assistants, sometimes as escorts or “masseurs.” Epstein accepts or declines, often with comments about the women’s age and physical features.
“Friends from the FSB”
Epstein's network of women may well have been used by Russian security services to collect compromising material on politicians and other influential figures, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said earlier in February when he announced an investigation into Epstein's Polish connections. Such material could still be used today, Tusk warned.
FSB references are recurring in the Epstein investigation. In an email to an unknown recipient in Moscow - likely someone who was blackmailing him - Epstein wrote in 2015:
“You should know that I felt the need to contact some friends from the FSB. (...) So I expect to never be threatened by you again.”
Epstein took his own life in a New York jail in August 2019, awaiting a federal trial on sex trafficking charges. Russia has repeatedly denied that the sex offender was a Russian agent.
It is tempting to joke about that theory, but let's not waste our time, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in February.
An investigation into financier Jeffrey Epstein began in 2005, after a 14-year-old girl told police that she had been molested by Epstein at his home in Palm Beach, Florida. The investigation grew and in 2007 he was indicted in federal court.
After a controversial, widely criticized plea deal, Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison for sex trafficking in 2008. He was released after 13 months.
The case received renewed attention in 2018, after a series of articles in the Miami Herald newspaper in which women came forward and accused Epstein of sexual assault during the period from 2001 to 2005.
In early July 2019, Epstein was arrested at an airport in New Jersey. The new charges against him concern the abuse of dozens of underage girls from 2002 to 2005. According to the prosecution and articles in the Miami Herald, Epstein tried to buy the silence of witnesses with millions of dollars. Epstein denies the crime.
On August 10, 2019, Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, he appears to have taken his own life.
