The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Saturday that it had appointed magistrates to analyze the Jeffrey Epstein files to uncover possible offenses, “particularly of a sexual or financial nature,” committed by French nationals
Information revealed in nearly three million pages of documents released last month by the Justice Department in the United States has sent shock waves through Europe and beyond, with its revelations of many wealthy and powerful people’s associations with Mr. Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex offender.
In its statement on Saturday, the prosecutor’s office said investigators were examining the newly released documents to determine whether to open “investigations into evidence that may constitute offenses to which French law would apply.”
In addition to announcing the broad probe, the prosecutor’s office described three new complaints related to the Epstein files that it had received.
Prosecutors said that they had opened an investigation into Fabrice Aidan, a French diplomat, in response to one of those complaints, which was filed by the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Mr. Aidan’s name appears in the Epstein documents more than 200 times. Merely being named in the files is not proof of wrongdoing, and the prosecutor’s office said the complaint did not contain further details.
Jade Dousselin, Mr. Aidan’s lawyer, said in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse this week that her client “denies all of the accusations brought against him” and that he was “fully available to the courts to answer their questions.”
Another complaint was filed by a Swedish woman against a man named Daniel Siad, who also shows up in the Epstein files. According to prosecutors, the woman accused Mr. Siad of “sexual acts that she describes as rape” and which she asserts were committed in France in 1990.
Mr. Siad could not be reached for comment, but in an interview on France 2 TV Channel on Tuesday he defended his contact with Mr. Epstein, saying that he “took advantage of my trust. He’s a gentleman, he knows how to talk, he’s a diplomat, I wasn’t in a position to know that this man was dangerous.”
The last complaint was filed against Frédéric Chaslin, a French conductor. Prosecutors did not say who filed this complaint, but said it involved allegations of sexual harassment committed in 2016 and was currently being analyzed.
In a lengthy statement posted on Facebook, Mr. Chaslin said that he had been introduced to Mr. Epstein by a mutual friend and that his dealings with him had been brief and innocent, connected with the hope of obtaining patronage for musical projects. He added that, “As Epstein moved in the circles of New York’s intellectual elite, I did not dig into his past.”
There have been no major political repercussions from the Epstein scandal so far in France, unlike some other European countries like the United Kingdom or Norway, where top officials and members of the royal families were found to have ties with the disgraced financier.
But the files did have consequences for Jack Lang, a French politician who once served as France’s culture minister. A week ago he resigned as head of the Arab World Institute, a Paris-based cultural center, after authorities said they were investigating reports that he and his family had financial links to Mr. Epstein.
“I am relieved that justice, true justice and not media or digital justice, is taking up this matter,” Mr. Lang said in an interview with La Tribune Dimanche, a French news outlet, on Saturday. “I believe in the law. When it comes to Mr. Jeffrey Epstein, I am as white as snow, but it seems that this expression is so outdated that it backfires on you.”
In the statement on Saturday the Paris prosecutor’s office added that it would also reanalyze the investigation into Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent and Epstein associate who died in February 2022, without specifying what it would reanalyze.
According to an investigation conducted at the time into exchanges between the two men, Mr. Epstein regularly asked Mr. Brunel for photographs of young girls when he traveled to Eastern European countries.
Investigators heard the testimony of 10 women against Mr. Brunel. Several, some of whom were underage at the time of the events they described, said they were made to drink alcohol and sexually assaulted. One of them described Mr. Brunel as the person who brought young girls to Mr. Epstein from Eastern Europe or Latin America.
Some of the women told investigators that they were forced into sexual relations with the two men because of their young age, the hold that the men had over them, and the isolation of the luxurious locations where they were taken, according to a summary of the investigation shared by the Paris prosecutor’s office.
That investigation was closed in 2023 after Mr. Brunel was found dead in his Paris jail cell, where he had been placed in pretrial detention in December 2020. He had been charged with rape, rape of a minor and sexual harassment.
Ségolène Le Stradic is a reporter and researcher covering France.
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