Earlier this year, Denise George, the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands, accused Jeffrey Epstein’s estate of using nondisclosure agreements with his victims and former employees to “conceal the criminal activity of Epstein and his associates who are still there,” as she told Vanity Fair in February. In June, George said that Epstein had set up a small bank there that conducted transactions worth tens of millions of dollars before and after his death, and that estate representatives “have not explained these irregularities,” according to the New York Times. The estate, according to the paper, is worth $600 million.
Now George, in continuing to investigate Epstein’s estate, has asked a federal judge to let her review sealed court testimony from Ghislaine Maxwell, who is awaiting trial after pleading not guilty to abetting Epstein’s sexual abuse of minors and lying about it under oath. The Miami Herald reported on Tuesday that the attorney general, in a filing to U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska, requested Maxwell’s transcript from a civil lawsuit between the socialite and Virginia Roberts Giuffre, an Epstein survivor who has also accused Maxwell of sexual abuse. (Maxwell has denied the claim.)
As the Herald notes, the paper has argued for the testimony to be unsealed on public interest grounds, but Maxwell’s attorneys have lodged an appeal that is scheduled to be heard later this month, arguing that it would prejudice the jury in her criminal trial scheduled for next year. However that decision unfolds, George argued she should see the transcript now because it could contain information that bears on her investigation into the Epstein estate and its lawyers and accountants who she alleges facilitated his crimes.
“The USVI seeks confidential access to these sealed documents and unfiled discovery materials because they are very likely relevant to its pending Virgin Islands Criminally Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (‘CICO’) enforcement action against the Estate of Jeffrey E. Epstein and several Epstein-controlled entities before the Superior Court of the U.S. Virgin Islands,” the filing said.
According to the Herald, George also claims that Epstein “used his vast wealth and property holdings and a deliberately opaque web of corporations and companies to transport young women and girls to his privately owned island, where they were held captive and subject to severe and extensive sexual abuse.”
While Maxwell’s case has been somewhat quiet since she was denied bail in July, her close connections to the present Epstein reckonings and investigations have brought her under some continuing scrutiny. Some reports about her detainment at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center have emerged too. The New York Post reported on Friday that she was only the second inmate there who was allowed to see a lawyer in person since coronavirus restrictions began in March.
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