Handout. / REUTERS
Twelve women filed a civil complaint on Wednesday against the federal police, accusing them of “repeated and continuous failures, delays, inactions” for 25 years.
Twelve women claiming to be victims of American financier Jeffrey Epstein, accused of sex crimes and trafficking but who committed suicide in prison before being tried, filed a civil complaint on Wednesday February 14 against the FBI federal police for its “failures” to dismantle the alleged criminal’s network.
“For more than two decades, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) enabled Jeffrey Epstein to sex traffic and sexually assault scores of children and young women while failing in the mission the American people were entitled to to wait”notes the complaint of the 12 women, identified by a pseudonym. “If the FBI had fulfilled its obligations to investigate and intervene, Epstein would not have been able to carry out the heinous crimes, sexual assaults and trafficking”thunder the plaintiffs in a court document filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.
The 12 women, who are demanding a civil trial, denounce the “repeated and continued failures, delays, inactions by the FBI that allowed Epstein and others to continue their sex trafficking conspiracy for nearly 25 years”. They mention, for example, a first report in August 1996 to the FBI from a woman, Maria Farmer, against Jeffrey Epstein and his companion and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of British tycoon Robert Maxwell, who has been serving a prison sentence since 2022 in New York. 20 years in prison. The plaintiffs even accuse the FBI of “concealment” in its investigations, but without providing factual elements.
A list of 150 to 180 names
At the beginning of January, a judge from the same court made public a list of names, contacts, acquaintances, relatives, victims or alleged accomplices of Epstein. Among these 150 to 180 identities, we find former US presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, but without mention of the slightest illegal or reprehensible behavior on their part. British Prince Andrew is also mentioned many times. Friend of the Maxwell-Epstein couple, he sealed an amicable agreement in 2022 – for $13 million according to the Daily Telegraph – with the American Virginia Giuffre who accused him of having sexually assaulted her in 2001 when she was 17 years old. The 63-year-old prince, who has fallen into disgrace, denies it.
The influence of the Epstein network fueled, after his death, a number of conspiracy theories about an assassination disguised as suicide in August 2019 in prison in New York. But forensics and the FBI concluded that he did kill himself and that this death “did not result from a criminal act”which was confirmed in 2023 by the Ministry of Justice.