Travel, exchange of favors, contacts with young models, businessmen, attempts to meet with Putin - the latest documents released by the American justice system in connection with the vague "Epstein affair" reveal the many and unclear links between the American sex offender and Russia.
Here is what is known about the main elements of the Russian section of this dossier, which has many ramifications.
The red thread Putin appears in the documents
Documents that Agence France-Presse has seen among the hundreds thousands, released since late January by the US Department of Justice, show that Vladimir Putin's name appears about a thousand times in email correspondence.
In the second decade of the 21st century, Epstein multiplied his attempts to meet with the Russian president, without it being possible to establish whether the meeting took place.
"Let's try to arrange a meeting with Putin", Epstein wrote in January 2014 in an email sent to Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland. He made a similar request in 2015 and 2018. The businessman also suggested going through intermediaries such as Sergei Lavrov, Putin's foreign minister, offering to provide him with information in return.
Although they speak of the financier's repeated efforts to get closer to the Russian authorities, the documents do not allow us to say whether he achieved his goal.
On February 3, the Kremlin assured through its spokesman Dmitry Peskov that it had not received an offer for a meeting between Putin and Epstein and rejected the accusations of the financier's ties to the Russian secret services, while Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that his country would conduct an investigation into possible such ties.
Russian girls
The documents contain many references to "Russian girls", but often no names are mentioned.
They hint that Epstein is had several stays in Russia, particularly in the second decade of the 21st century. Among the documents is a Russian visa issued in 2018, an undated photo of the businessman outside a hotel in central Moscow, and another photo of his former partner, Gillian Maxwell, posing with two Russian soldiers.
Flight tickets were booked for both Epstein and young women, including Russian women, introduced by intermediaries who often emphasized the fact that many of the women were blonde and young.
Epstein also appears to have relied on young Russian women who had returned to their homeland to find him “girlfriends.”
The emails also suggest that Epstein and his recruiters took advantage of some of the young women’s desire to leave Russia, as well as their uncertain residency status while living in the United States.
Tips and intermediaries
Billionaire Epstein, found dead in his cell in 2019, had the ambition to bring figures from the technology sector or the American political world to Russia in order to become indispensable in the eyes of both Moscow and Western elites.
Among Epstein's most prominent Russian interlocutors is Sergei Belyakov, a former deputy minister of economy and a graduate of the academy of the Federal Security Service of Russia.
This senior civil servant was dismissed in 2014 after publicly criticizing the government and continued his career on the organizing committee of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
In several emails, Belyakov seeks Epstein's help to bring leading figures to business forums in Russia in 2014-2015, several years after the American was convicted of solicitation of minors for prostitution.
Belyakov also asked Epstein for advice on how to circumvent Western sanctions imposed on Russia after its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea. In May 2014, Epstein offered "innovations of Russian origin: digital currencies, oil-linked currencies, smart contracts."
The exchange of messages also sheds light on regular contacts between Jeffrey Epstein and Vitaly Churkin, Russia's former representative to the UN Security Council who died in 2017 of a heart attack.
In August 2016, Churkin was invited to a lunch hosted by Epstein, attended by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Tom Barak, now the US ambassador to Turkey.
When contacted for comment, neither Sergei Belyakov – current president of the Russian Association of Non-State Pension Funds – nor Vitaly Churkin's son, who appears to have received help from the sex offender for an internship in 2016, responded to AFP's inquiries.
Translation from French: Gabriela Golemanska, BTA