Pressure on Andrew as ‘supplier of girls for Epstein’ is held
A FRENCH fashion agent accused of having sex with the teenager who claimed she was bedded by Prince Andrew has been arrested over Jeffrey Epstein’s global under-age sex ring.
The arrest of modelling boss JeanLuc Brunel in Paris saw the net tighten around Epstein’s inner circle and led to renewed calls for Andrew to talk to the authorities.
Brunel, 74, was held on Wednesday at Charles de Gaulle Airport as he tried to board a flight to Dakar, Senegal.
He has faced accusations of being a key facilitator for Epstein, including giving the paedophile financier 12-year-old triplets to abuse as a ‘birthday present’.
Brunel, who claims to have discovered models Christy Turlington and Milla Jovovich, is accused of rape, sexual assault of minors, sexual harassment, trafficking and being part of a criminal conspiracy.
Virginia Roberts, who claims she was forced to sleep with the Duke of York when she was 17, has alleged in US court
‘Epstein slept with 1,000 of Brunel’s girls’
documents that she and Brunel had sex ‘many times when I was 16 through 19 years old’. Both Andrew and Brunel deny her claims. The duke says he has no memory of meeting her.
But lawyers for Epstein’s victims said Brunel’s arrest would put pressure on Andrew to keep his promise, made last year, to talk to the FBI about his friendship with Epstein.
Brunel came to the attention of French prosecutors after Epstein’s arrest in July last year, a month before he hanged himself in prison while awaiting trial. Officers raided the offices of Karin Models, an agency founded by Brunel, and searched Epstein’s £6 million Paris home not far from the Arc de Triomphe.
But the whereabouts of Brunel, who has worked with the likes of Jerry Hall, Sharon Stone and Monica Bellucci, have been a mystery until now.
He was last night being held in a police station in Paris, where he was being interviewed about his connections with a range of figures. They include Epstein, the paedophile’s alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell and the Duke of York, a French prosecuting source said.
Among Brunel’s alleged victims, it is claimed in court documents, were the triplets he trafficked from a Paris housing estate to Epstein.
Pictures published last year by the Daily Mail show Brunel on Epstein’s Caribbean island with Maxwell, who was arrested in July. Rumours have swirled about Brunel for years. In 1988, US TV show 60 Minutes spoke to dozens of models who said he had sexually assaulted them.
In an interview for a book in 1995 about the modelling industry, Brunel was unapologetic about his conduct. He said: ‘You get laid tonight with a model, is that a crime? I don’t understand why people go into your personal life.’
Epstein is said to have invested $1 million in Brunel’s modelling agency MC2 which, it is alleged, under Brunel’s instructions acted as a pipeline to bring young women to the US for the financier to abuse. Miss Roberts, now a 37-year- old mother- ofthree living in Australia under her married name Virginia Roberts Giuffre, said in court documents that Brunel would bring girls aged between 12 and 24 to the US ‘for sexual purposes and farm them out to his friends, including Epstein’. She claimed: ‘Jeffrey Epstein has told me that he has slept with over 1,000 of Brunel’s girls.’ Brad Edwards, who represents dozens of Epstein victims, including Miss Roberts, said: ‘ This news has made many happy today.
‘ Over the years we have received many calls and accounts of his abuse and this morning those women breathed a sigh of relief.
‘The wheels of justice turn slow but it seems they have finally caught up to Jean-Luc.’
Thysia Huisman, a former Dutch model who says she was drugged and raped by Brunel at the age of 18, said: ‘This is huge news. I am crying with joy.’
The arrest caps a nightmarish week for the duke in which the Mail concluded its bombshell series about his dealings with Epstein. Our reports questioned his alibi on the day he allegedly had sex with Miss Roberts and showed he misled Emily Maitlis during his carcrash BBC interview.
A spokesman for the duke declined to comment last night. Brunel’s lawyer, Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt, said her client was not guilty of any wrongdoing.