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szdaily -> Special Report -> 
Jeffrey Epstein: wealthy US sex offender who settled suit
    2018-12-07  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

A DECADE ago, wealthy U.S. money manager Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to sex crimes involving underage girls and got 13 months behind bars. What the public and his accusers didn’t know at the time was that he had secretly struck a deal with federal prosecutors that spared him from charges that could have put him away for the rest of his life.

When the deal finally came to light years later, it immediately raised suspicions that Epstein — a man who counted Bill Clinton and Donald Trump among his friends and had some of the finest legal talent in America as his lawyers — had used his wealth and political connections to win special treatment.

Those allegations flared anew in recent weeks as news organizations published interviews with the alleged victims and took a closer look at Alexander Acosta, who as the U.S. attorney in Miami in 2008 approved the secret deal. Acosta is now Trump’s secretary of labor.

On Tuesday, a lawsuit that many had hoped would expose some of the lurid allegations against Epstein by putting some of his accusers on the stand ended abruptly in a settlement just as jury selection was about to begin.

The lawsuit that was settled with an apology Tuesday did not touch directly on Epstein’s alleged predilection for sex with underage girls. Instead, it was a defamation lawsuit brought by a lawyer, Bradley Edwards, who said Epstein tried to smear him.

Edwards, who represents some of Epstein’s alleged victims, had planned to put some of accusers — some of whom say they were 13 or 14 when they were molested — on the stand if the defamation case had gone to trial.

But the attempt to get to the bottom of the Epstein case and how he managed to get such a light sentence is not over: Some of his accusers are pursuing a separate legal effort to nullify the plea agreement and, they hope, expose him to federal prosecution again.

“That injustice needs to be addressed and will be addressed,” said Jack Scarola, one of the attorneys lined up against Epstein. “There is no justification for the broad scope of immunity that was granted.”

A list of people who have associated with Epstein over the years would take in the world of celebrity, science, politics — and royalty.

Over the years, the casually-dressed, globe-trotting financier, who was said to log more than 600 flying hours a year, has been linked with Kevin Spacey, Chris Tucker and Manhattan-London society figure Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late media titan Robert Maxwell.

“I invest in people — be it politics or science. It’s what I do,” he once said to friends.

Epstein reportedly flew Tucker and Spacey to Africa on his private jet as part of a charitable endeavor. Clinton, meanwhile, flew on multiple occasions in the same plane to Epstein’s private Caribbean island, Little St. James, between 2002 and 2005 as he developed his philanthropic post-presidential career.

Reports in the U.S. media say many of the A-list names broke off any links with the former maths teacher after his arrest and conviction in 2008 of having sex with an underage girl whom he had solicited. His arrest followed an 11-month undercover investigation at a mansion in Florida’s Palm Beach that Epstein owned.

In 2008, he pleaded guilty to a single charge of soliciting prostitution and was handed a 18-month jail sentence. He served 13 months in jail and was obliged to register as a sex offender.

A 2011 report in the New York Post said that he celebrated his release from jail and his return to a property he maintains in New York — an eight-story mansion on East 71st Street — with Britain’s Prince Andrew.

“I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender,’” he told the newspaper at the time. “It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.”

Epstein was born in 1953 in Brooklyn, New York, where his father worked for the city’s parks department. He attended Brooklyn’s Lafayette High School and excelled at mathematics. This helped him, a college dropout, secure job in his early 20s as a maths teacher at the exclusive Dalton School, a private college located on New York’s Upper East Side.

Among his pupils was the son of Bear Stearns chairman Alan “Ace” Greenberg.

In 1976, after a few years teaching the children of the wealthy, he accepted a job offer from Greenber that allowed him to oversee their money and left to become an options trader at Bear Stearns.

Four years later he was made a partner, but by 1982 he had left to set up his own boutique investment company, J. Epstein and Co.

He reportedly only accepted clients prepared to invest a minimum of US$1 billion, though many profiles of Epstein that admit a lack of hard, verifiable facts about his business have added to the air of mystery. It is said, for instance, that Epstein forgoes alcohol and instead prefers Earl Grey tea, and he spends an hour and fifteen minutes every day doing advanced yoga with his personal instructor, who travels with him wherever he goes.

Among Epstein’s early investment clients were Leslie Wexner, the Ohio-based businessman who is CEO of L Brands, the fashion and lifestyle group whose brands include Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works. In 2013, Forbes magazine estimated the 77-year-old Wexler’s wealth to be US$7.3 billion.

Epstein has always been interested in science, funding scientific projects and investments around the world. In 2000 he established the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation, which funds science research and education globally. He has reportedly donated US$30 million to Harvard University, money the Ivy League institution retained despite his conviction and registration as a sex offender.

Reports say the silver-coiffed Epstein has invested millions to research subjects such as evolution, cancer and HIV. His projects have linked him to many leading figures in the world of science and research including Gerald Edelman, Murray Gell-Mann and Stephen Hawking.

According to court papers, Epstein owned the Palm Beach mansion where girls were brought for what they were sometimes told were massage sessions. He allegedly had female fixers who would look for suitable girls, some of them recruited from Eastern Europe and other parts of the world.

Epstein could have faced a far more severe penalty if federal prosecutors had pursued a draft 53-page indictment that was never filed and included sex trafficking charges.

“For a man that was a multi-millionaire, if not billionaire at the time, he was able to buy his way out of what should have been a life sentence,” said attorney Spencer Kuvin, who represented three young women who alleged they were lured to Epstein’s Palm Beach estate while they were underage.

“And it was really unbelievable to us at the time that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the U.S. Attorney’s Office, wasn’t taking the matter more seriously,” he said.

Some of Epstein’s accusers are now arguing that their rights were trampled under a federal law that says crime victims must be informed about plea bargains.

One young woman alleged in court documents that Epstein shared her with his friends, including Prince Andrew, a charge denied by Buckingham Palace.

Epstein’s legal team at various times included such big names as Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz.

Acosta has not commented about the case during the recent media coverage. He was asked briefly about the non-prosecution agreement at his Senate confirmation hearing.

“At the end of the day, based on the evidence, professionals within a prosecutor’s office decided that a plea that guarantees someone goes to jail, that guarantees he register generally and guarantees other outcomes, is a good thing,” he said.

One of Epstein’s lawyers, Roy Black, has said there was no conspiracy to violate victims’ rights, and the plea agreement was “no sweetheart deal by any stretch of the imagination.”

Epstein has continued living the high-life since his release, enjoying his Florida, New Mexico and New York City estates as well as his own 78-acre private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“He is this mysterious, Gatsbyesque figure. He likes people to think that he is very rich, and he cultivates this air of aloofness. The whole thing is weird,” said a prominent Wall Streeter.

He dresses casually — jeans, open-necked shirts, and sneakers — and is rarely seen in a tie. Those close to him say the reason he quit his board seat at the Rockefeller Institute was that he hated wearing a suit. “It feels like a dress,” he told one friend.

Epstein likes to tell people that he’s a loner, a man who’s never touched alcohol or drugs, and one whose nightlife is far from energetic. But according to Trump, a different Epstein emerges.

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,’’ Trump once said. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

(SD-Agencies)

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