Epstein confidant’s donations revealed
Ghislaine Maxwell was one of Jeffrey Epstein’s closest confidants, accused of recruiting girls for the disgraced financier’s network of sex slaves, even of being the “madam” at the heart of the scandal.
Now the Sunday Telegraph can reveal Maxwell, the socialite daughter of Robert Maxwell, made a charitable donation to a hospital where the same teenager was treated after an alleged sexual assault by Epstein.
Virginia Giuffre, who was pictured at one of Epstein’s parties with the Duke of York, Prince Andrew, has claimed she was taken to New YorkPresbyterian Hospital for treatment after Epstein sexually abused her.
She said Epstein and Maxwell brought her there after an incident in 2001, when she was 17.
Maxwell has previously called Giuffre’s claims “fictitious stories” and denied any wrongdoing.
Financial records, seen by the Sunday Telegraph, show that on May 2, 2007, Maxwell donated US$1000 to the hospital where Giuffre was treated. The tax-deductible donation was listed in financial documents filed by Maxwell’s private foundation.
The documents also show Maxwell donated to a charity fighting child sex trafficking at the same time Epstein was being investigated for molesting underage girls.
On April 15, 2008, she donated US$350 to Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, known as GEMS, a New York-based charity seeking to rehabilitate girls who have “experienced commercial sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking”.
At the time of the donation, Epstein was negotiating a controversial deal with prosecutors amid a flood of allegations against him.
Maxwell, whose newspaper tycoon father plundered his companies’ pension funds before he fell to his death off his yacht in 1991, has found herself at the centre of the Epstein scandal after the Wall Street financier, her former boyfriend, was found dead in his jail cell on August 10. He was awaiting trial in New York on new charges of sex trafficking underage girls. Prosecutors have said they will pursue any “coconspirators”.
Maxwell, who has not been charged with a crime, was photographed in a hamburger restaurant in Los Angeles on Tuesday, but it is not known where she is now.
Her private foundation, Max Foundation TR, was set up in 1996, with her and one of Epstein’s lawyers as trustees.
The biggest donation made was US$2500 to the Clinton Foundation in 2003.