The Mercury News Weekend

Epstein sex-exploitati­on case won’t be reopened by police

- By Bloomberg

The United Kingdom police said it won’t reopen a sex- exploitati­on investigat­ion into Jeffrey Epstein, days after Prince Andrew sparked outrage with a TV interview about his friendship with the convicted sexoffende­r who died in a New York jail.

A human- traf ficking complaint was originally received by the Metropolit­an Police in July 2015, concerning an individual brought to central London in March 2001. But the Met said Thursday that it wouldn’t be appropriat­e to investigat­e further because most of the case would be focused outside of the U.K.

Epstein, a fund manager worth hundreds of millions of dollars, had been charged with sex traffickin­g after a decade of allegation­s that he abused underage girls. He killed himself while he was left alone for almost eight hours overnight at the downtown Manhattan jail in August.

At the time of the initial complaint, police interviewe­d the accuser and assessed other evidence before declining to open a full criminal investigat­ion. The Met said that they had shared the informatio­n with other law enforcemen­t organizati­ons but had not received a formal request to help investigat­e. The case has attracted attention in the U.K. because of Epstein’s friendship with Prince Andrew, a member of the British royal family.

Last week, the prince announced he would step down from royal duties following an interview he gave to the BBC. During the program, he faced questions about allegation­s made by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers, who said she was forced into sexual encounters with the prince as a teenager.

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Jeffrey Epstein

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