Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘lack of candor’ doomed second bid for bail
Ghislaine Maxwell has not been “fully candid about her financial situation” and her attempts at deception have become more obvious since her arrest, a judge wrote in a decision made public Wednesday.
Judge Alison Nathan denied the British socialite’s second bid for bail this week. The judge detailed her reasoning in an unsealed, Manhattan Federal Court decision noting Maxwell claimed after her arrest to have $3.5 million in assets. Maxwell failed to mention she brought $20 million to her marriage in 2016. She had since transferred millions to her hubby through a trust — another key detail that Maxwell failed to tell authorities.
“The evidence of a lack of candor is, if anything, stronger now than in July 2020, as it is clear to the Court that the Defendant’s representations … were woefully incomplete,” Nathan wrote. “That lack of candor raises significant concerns as to whether the Court has now been provided a full and accurate picture of her finances and as to the Defendant’s willingness to abide by any set of conditions of release.”
Maxwell revealed the new details about her wealth in her bid for $28.5 million bail while awaiting trial on charges of grooming Jeffrey Epstein’s victims for sexual abuse in the mid-1990s. Nathan, who had already denied an earlier bail request, was unpersuaded by Maxwell’s second proposal.
It was unlikely, the judge wrote, that Maxwell’s initial misleading statements about money were “the result of the Defendant’s misestimation rather than misdirection.”
The court also had doubts about Maxwell’s marriage, which the British socialite touted as evidence that she would stay in the U.S. to face justice. But after her arrest at a $1 million New Hampshire estate, Maxwell claimed she was in the process of getting a divorce.
“The Defendant now argues that her newly re
vealed relationship with her spouse signals her deep affective ties in the country, but at the time she was arrested, she was not living with him and claimed to be getting divorced. Indeed, she does not propose to live with him were she to be released on bail, undercutting her argument that that relationship would create an insurmountable burden to her fleeing,” Nathan wrote.