Sawt Falasteen - Around 10 'new' victims in France's Epstein probe: prosecutor

France opened a human trafficking investigation after the US Justice Department in January released the latest cache of files from the investigation into the disgraced financier, who died in prison in 2019 while facing charges of trafficking underage girls for sex.

French magistrates are seeking to investigate possible offences committed in France or involving French perpetrators who facilitated his crimes.

Top Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said around 20 suspected victims had made themselves known after she in February urged potential victims to speak up.

Some were already known to investigators, she told the RTL broadcaster.

"But we also had new victims come forward, ones we didn't know at all. There are around 10 of them," she added.

"The choice we've made for the time being is to listen to these victims," she said.

"A certain number of them are abroad so the investigators have tried to set up meetings to suit when they are able to come to Paris."

Investigators were also scouring through the so-called Epstein files, and would be searching them for any names mentioned by alleged victims, she said.

"We have also once again pulled out Mr Epstein's computers, his telephone records, his address books," she said, adding her team would be "making requests for international assistance".

French investigators searched Epstein's luxury Paris apartment in September 2019, after he was found hanged in his New York jail cell the previous month.

Suspected victims already known to investigators included women who had spoken during investigations into former European model agency boss Gerald Marie and late model agent Jean-Luc Brunel.

Fifteen women in March urged France to investigate Marie for possible links to Epstein.

Investigators in 2023 closed another probe into accusations Marie committed sexual abuse in the 1980s and 1990s because it was too long ago to be prosecuted.

French authorities arrested Brunel in 2020 after allegations he sexually abused minors and procured victims for the US billionaire. He was found dead in prison in 2022.

Two former models have told AFP that a modelling scout named Daniel Siad groomed them with the aim of delivering them to Epstein in one case in the 2000s, and Marie in the other case in the 1990s.

In the latest human trafficking probe, "none of the people who could potentially be implicated have been questioned" so far, Beccuau said.

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to procuring for prostitution a girl under the age of 18, and served 13 months in prison before being released on probation.

M.AbuKhalil--SF-PST