Polish authorities have launched an investigation into whether Jeffrey Epstein acted as a spy for Russia amid suspicions he could have been paid for collecting compromising material on well-connected figures.
Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, told a government meeting he was establishing a team to look into the numerous mentions of President Putin and other indications of Russian links in the Epstein files, as well as any impact on Poland.
The US Department of Justice’s release of millions of documents related to Epstein has revealed the late financier and sex offender’s ties to many prominent people in politics, business and academia.
There are 1,056 mentions of Putin and almost 10,000 references to Moscow, including suggestions of potential meetings with Putin.
The type of photographs taken by Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as the personal secrets he learnt, suggested a harvesting of kompromat, Russian for compromising material, of the type gathered by Moscow’s FSB security agency to blackmail people.
“More and more leads, more and more information, and more and more commentary in the global press all relate to the suspicion that this unprecedented paedophilia scandal was co-organised by Russian intelligence services,” Mr Tusk said.
“I don’t need to tell you how serious the increasingly likely possibility that Russian intelligence services co-organised this operation is for the security of the Polish state. This can only mean that they also possess compromising materials against many leaders still active today.”
Maria Zakharova, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, said in December that the Epstein affair showed the hypocrisy of western elites. “Here, as I understood, were all the western ‘lecturers on life’ who looked down on Russia and who lectured us about ‘democracy and human rights’ in interesting poses with equally interesting leisure partners,” she posted on Telegram.
Various indications of Russian influence emerge from the Epstein files, including in relation to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
One document shows that Epstein offered to introduce him to “Irina”, a “beautiful” 26-year-old Russian woman, two years after Epstein’s conviction for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution.
“I have a friend who I think you might enjoy having dinner with, her name is irina she will be london 20-24,”
Epstein wrote in an email dated August 11, 2010, to an account called “The Duke,” believed to belong to Andrew.
Russia is a recurrent theme in the Epstein files, including his claim that Bill Gates sought treatment for a sexually transmitted disease caught from “sex with Russian girls”. Gates emphatically denied this.
In an email in November 2010, Epstein asked an unnamed recipient if they needed a Russian visa; in another email, dated September 11, 2011, an anonymous person discusses plans for an “appointment with Putin” when Epstein visits Russia.
“Spoke with Igor. He said last time you were in Palm Beach, you told him you had an appointment with Putin on Sept 16 and that he could go ahead and book his ticket to Russia to arrive a few days before you,” the email stated.
In May 2013, Epstein wrote in an email to Thorbjorn Jagland, the Council of Europe secretary-general, that he wanted to help Putin and Russia “reinvent the financial system”.
Also that month Epstein sent an email to Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, claiming Putin tried to set up a meeting with him, which he declined. “Putin asked that i meet him in st petersburg the same time as his economic conference i told him no. if he wants to meet he will need to set aside real time and privacy, lets see what happens [sic],” Epstein wrote.
An email in 2014 suggested another potential meeting with Putin. “Hey Jeffrey, I wasn’t able to convince [LinkedIn co-founder] Reid [Hoffman] to change his schedule to go meet Putin with you,” the email from Japanese entrepreneur Joi Ito said.
Another email suggested that the potential 2014 meeting between Putin and Epstein was cancelled after the shooting down of flight MH17 by Russian forces over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
In 2018, Epstein emailed Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former strategist, about a meeting between Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Jagland. Epstein followed up by writing to Jagland that Lavrov could “get insight on talking to me”.
Esptein also claimed he helped Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s former UN ambassador, to “understand” Trump. “Churkin was great. He understood trump after our conversations. It is not complex. he must be seen to get something its that simple,” [sic] Epstein said of Churkin, who died in 2017.
Christopher Steele, a former head of MI6’s Russia desk, told Times Radio it was “very likely” that Epstein was in the pay of Moscow to gather kompromat. Steele suggested that the link could have developed through Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell.
“My understanding from my American sources is that as early as the 1970s, Epstein was effectively involved with Russian organised crime in Brighton Beach in New York and through them with the Russian mission in New York and was almost certainly recruited by them at that time,” Steele said.
“Moving on to a later period involving probably Robert Maxwell in the 1980s, it seems to me again that Epstein had significant ties to Maxwell. When Maxwell was involved in getting Jewish people out of the Soviet Union in return effectively for laundering Soviet Communist Party hard currency and investing it in the West, I suspect that that’s where quite a lot of Epstein’s investment money came from.”
Steele added: “Possibly the majority of his investment funds, which seem to never have been explained, actually came from the Soviet Union.”
