Why was Ghislaine Maxwell arrested and what was her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein?
GHISLAINE Maxwell, the former girlfriend of notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, has been arrested by the FBI.
She was busted in Bedford, New Hampshire, near the home believed to belong to her new boyfriend.
Maxwell has been accused of having a role in Epstein’s sex trafficking ring of underage girls.
Who is Ghislaine Maxwell?
Ghislaine Maxwell is a British socialite and heiress who became a confidante of Jeffrey Epstein.
She has been labeled the notorious sex abuser’s “pimp.”
She was born in 1961, in Maisons Laffitte, France, and is the youngest child of disgraced media tycoon and British publisher Robert Maxwell.
In 1992 she had a romantic relationship with American financier Jeffrey Epstein and remained closely associated with him for decades afterward.
Maxwell is accused luring children into the clutches of former boyfriend Epstein and even taking part in some of the abuse – claims she strongly denies.
Maxwell, one of the world’s most wanted women, fled to France, where she was born, to avoid questioning in the US by the FBI over her links to the late disgraced billionaire.
The 58-year-old vanished from public life in 2016 and was bolted up in a secret hideaway on Avenue Matignon, in Paris’s exclusive 8th Arrondissement.
It is unknown when she returned to the US.
Why was Ghislaine Maxwell arrested?
Ghislaine Maxwell has been arrested by the FBI on charges linked to sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
She is expected to appear in a federal court on July 2, sources told News 4 New York.
The place of her arrest is understood to be close to the home of her alleged boyfriend Scott Borgerson.
Borgerson is the 43-year-old CEO of CargoMetrics, a company that processes data-analytics for maritime trade and shipping.
His company has been valued at $100million.
Lawyers for Epstein’s victims hired private investigators to try to find Maxwell and have issued writs at a number of addresses worldwide, without success.
The FBI wants to quiz Maxwell over her links to Epstein, whose crimes have been detailed in Netflix documentary Filthy Rich.
The 57-year-old has been accused of acting as a “madam” for the convicted sex offender, US court documents revealed.
Almost 2,000 pages of a lawsuit were released in a defamation case involving Virginia Giuffre (then Roberts), who in 2015 claimed Prince Andrew slept with her three times.
Andrew has strenuously denied allegations by Giuffre that Epstein arranged for her to have sex with him.
Ms Giuffre alleges she was recruited by Maxwell in 1999 where she was introduced to Epstein.
Another court document mentions that Giuffre, now 35, claimed to have had an encounter with Andrew in a bathtub.
It was raised by lawyers for Maxwell in an effort to show the former masseuse had not mentioned that allegation before 2014 and was lying about it.
The document says the tub was “too small for a man of Prince Andrew’s size to enjoy a bath in let alone sex.”
Ms Giuffre claims she was encouraged “to have sexual relations” with Andrew in Maxwell’s London flat.
Maxwell has repeatedly denied any involvement in Epstein’s crimes.
What was Jeffrey Epstein accused of?
Leading up to his 2019 arrest, mysterious tycoon Jeffrey Epstein was accused of abusing women and underage girls for decades, assembling a network of enablers to help carry out and cover up his crimes.
Epstein came from humble beginnings yet managed to lie and manipulate his way to the top of the financial world.
He eventually gained tremendous wealth and power while running an international sex trafficking ring.
The serial sex abuser made a secret plea deal with the government in 2008 avoiding a potential life sentence and continued to abuse women.
What happened to Epstein?
Epstein, a registered sex offender, was arrested last summer on new federal charges of exploiting dozens of underage girls in New York and Florida in the early 2000s.
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He attempted suicide in custody in late July, and then died after another suicide attempt in early August.
Two of the guards tasked with monitoring Epstein now face federal charges for not properly supervising him before his death.
One day before his suicide, a federal appeals court released the transcript of a 2016 deposition in which Epstein repeatedly refused to say whether Maxwell had procured young girls for him.