Two French cabinet officials are calling for a probe into the late accused sex trafficker and disgraced multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein to solve “many unanswered questions” about how he is linked to the nation.
Adrien Taquet, secretary of state to the minister of solidarities and health, and Marlène Schiappa, secretary of state for equality between men and women, urged the French government to start its own investigation into Epstein.
“The US investigation has highlighted links with France,” Schiappa and Taquet said in the statement. “It thus seems to us fundamental for the victims that an investigation be opened in France so that all is brought to light.”
A spokesperson for the Paris prosecutor’s office said efforts to launch an investigation were “currently underway.”
“The elements received at the Paris prosecutor’s office are being analyzed and cross-referenced,” the spokesperson told ABC News. “The first audits are currently underway to determine whether an investigation should be opened in France.”
Epstein owned multiple properties in Paris along with homes in New York, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Florida. The financier had been returning from Paris when authorities had arrested him on sex trafficking charges in July in New Jersey.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of several women who accused Epstein of sexual assault, also said she flew to Paris with Epstein as a teenager in 2001. Epstein’s alleged co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell also joined the couple on the 2001 trip, according to ABC News.
Court documents state that Giuffre said there was an instance in which Maxwell “sent [her] to have sex with the owner of a large hotel chain” in Paris. Maxwell had denied the claims and had not been charged with a crime.
FBI agents have already begun investigating Epstein’s property in the Caribbean and have launched an investigation into his Manhattan jail cell.
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