The Paris prosecutor’s office said Tuesday authorities searched the Paris apartment of child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the offices of the modeling agency belonging to Epstein’s longtime friend Jean-Luc Brunel.
The French raid on Epstein’s luxury Paris apartment comes after the jet-setting financier was found dead in his Manhattan prison cell following what the medical examiner ruled to be a suicide by hanging. Epstein had been facing new charges of child sex trafficking after escaping with a sweetheart deal in 2008.
Following his death, investigators worldwide have increased their scrutiny of those who may have enabled Epstein, including British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s on-again off-again girlfriend who is alleged to have helped recruit and entice underage girls; Prince Andrew, who invited him to royal residences in the United Kingdom and visited his private island and home in New York; and Jean-Luc Brunel, founder of Karin Models, who has been tied to Epstein’s illicit activities in court documents.
The whereabouts of Maxwell and Brunel are currently unknown.
Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre alleged that Brunel used his model agency connections to procure women for Epstein.
“A lot of the girls came from poor countries or poor backgrounds, and he lured them in with a promise of making good money,” Giuffre said in 2015. “Jeffrey Epstein has told me that he has slept with over 1,000 of Brunel’s girls, and everything that I have seen confirms this claim.”
Giuffre said she assumed Brunel procured the girls from Eastern Europe. “They were young and European looking and sounding,” she said.
Brunel flew on Epstein’s infamous Lolita Express nearly two dozen times, and flight logs show that a June 2002 trip from Palm Beach to the Bahamas to New Jersey to New York City and then to Paris and Hyeres in France included Epstein, Maxwell, Giuffre, and Brunel.
The French modeling executive also visited Epstein in Palm Beach County jail nearly 70 times a decade ago, according to visitor logs.
Brunel was previously the subject of a 60 Minutes documentary which alleged he’d drugged and raped models, which he has denied.
The recent raids in France are part of broader investigation into Epstein launched last month.