Sibling revelry: DoJ files suggest Ghislaine not the only Maxwell who took Epstein cash

On 15 June 2022, six months after Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking, her lawyer sent a sentencing memo to the New York court.

Alongside the expected arguments – that she was just a pawn in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse empire – was a more surprising submission. Growing up as a Maxwell, the lawyer argued, was such a hardship it should mitigate her sentence.

At first glance, the argument seemed hard to sustain. Born on Christmas Day in 1961, Ghislaine grew up in a 53-room Oxfordshire mansion. She studied modern languages at Oxford, a contemporary of Boris Johnson, before becoming a fixture of London’s shoulder-padded, champagne-quaffing social scene in the 1980s. Yet, her lawyer argued, this privilege masked a damaging childhood, one shaped by one of the 20th century’s most complex and controversial characters – her father, the press baron Robert Maxwell.

“Every Sunday, [Robert] selected one child to answer his questions on a particular topic,” the sentencing memo said. “If the child stumbled, or gave a wrong answer … Mr Maxwell would explode, threaten and rant …until they were reduced to pulp. The whole family [was] in utter distress.”

At 13, Ghislaine tacked a poster of a pony on her bedroom wall, the report claimed. Outraged, her father grabbed the hammer “and banged on Ghislaine’s dominant hand, leaving it severely bruised”.

After Robert’s death in 1991, and the discovery he plundered close to £500m from his companies’ pension funds, Ghislaine was “left to fend for herself”. “It was around this time,” the lawyer added, pointedly, “that Ms Maxwell met Jeffrey Epstein for the first time.” In the memo, Ghislaine cast herself as the victim of two predators: her father and Epstein. And yet that is only partially true. Interviews with those who knew her, and analysis of US Department of Justice files, suggest a more complicated reality.

Robert was abusive and adulterous, but Ghislaine idolised him, perhaps more than her siblings did, and appeared to inherit some of his traits.

Central to these was an obsession with money, an ability to manipulate, and an apparent willingness to collect information that may be useful later. She was sent to prison for 20 years for child sex trafficking in 2022.

After Robert Maxwell’s death, his children were supposedly left with nothing. Yet in the 1990s, Ghislaine continued to live lavishly in New York. “She seemed to have plenty of money,” said Dafydd Jones, a society photographer who took pictures of Ghislaine at the time. “She looked very rich.” How she amassed this wealth remains just as much of a mystery as how Epstein got his. A JP Morgan report contained in the DoJ files puts Ghislaine’s net worth at $10m. The report attributed this wealth to trusts left by her father, implying that offshore funds survived his death.

Tom Bower, a biographer of Robert Maxwell, disputes this. “I don’t believe she had $10m from some trust,” he said. “The evidence was that she had very little.” According to an analysis by Randall Scott Taylor, a financial researcher, about $92.5m flowed into Ghislaine’s accounts during the time she associated with Epstein. Taylor’s analysis was based on an “audit” of the 3million pages of Epstein files released last month by the DoJ.

Much of this cash appears to have come from Epstein himself. In 1999, he transferred $18.3m to Ghislaine and another $5m a few years later. No one has ever explained what happened to this cash, or what Ghislaine did to earn it. Other large payments from Epstein to Ghislaine immediately reversed back into his accounts. Such circular transactions are often used to avoid, or illegally evade, tax.

“I had no control,” Ghislaine told Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general last year, when he asked her about these sums. “I don’t believe any of it was my money.”

If Ghislaine was telling the truth, it would not be the first time a powerful man has used her for financial shenanigans. In November 1990, just months before his death, Robert reportedly sent Ghislaine to New York on Concorde carrying share certificates that she handed over to a trusted lawyer. These certificates were said to have been part of Robert’s fraud, allowing him to borrow against assets that weren’t his. “He was using assets owned by public companies to finance private debt,” Bower said. “[Ghislaine] wasn’t privy to the fraud. But she was part of the conveyor belt.”

It is clear that Ghislaine considered Epstein her financial anchor. Not only did he shower her with gifts, including a $60,000 diamond necklace, the DoJ documents show, but he apparently promised to support her indefinitely. In 2020, she filed a lawsuit against Epstein’s estate in which she stated that in 2004 “Epstein assured Maxwell that even if her business ventures failed he would support her financially”.

This obsession with money survived her relationship with Epstein. In the 2000s, she dated Ted Waitt, the billionaire founder of Gateway computers, and then Scott Borgerson, a wealthy investor. In August 2019, two days before he died in prison, Epstein bequeathed $10m to Ghislaine in his will, according to a DoJ document.

Despite their father’s behaviour, or because of it, Ghislaine’s six surviving siblings remain close to her. “[Robert] didn’t fracture the relationship,” Bower said. “It bound them together.” Ian Maxwell has spearheaded a legal and PR campaign to overturn her conviction, arguing that she never received a fair trial. Intriguingly, another Maxwell sibling, who has kept a far lower profile, appears to have sought to benefit from Epstein’s riches.

In 2010 Isabel Maxwell, Ghislaine’s older sister and an internet entrepreneur, was invited to be a panellist at the World Economic Forum in Marrakech. Epstein appears to have covered the $3,500 cost, as well as $1,088.94 for the hotel fee. “Thanks so very very much for helping,” Isabel wrote to him, according to an email released by the DoJ. “You can wire all the directly to me at Wells Fargo.”

The year before, Epstein appears to have paid about $25,000 to Isabel’s husband, a self-styled optical illusionist called Al Seckel, to organise a team of hackers to remove negative information about him on Wikipedia and Google. The financier later seemingly sent an email to another hacker in which he implied that two of Maxwell’s sisters – Isabel and Christine – were also due payments from him. “Isabel Maxwell (not paid),” he wrote. “Christine Maxwell (not paid).”

In April 2009, when Epstein was in prison, he appears to have received an email asking for $10m in seed money for a non-profit called Blue World Alliance. Isabel was president of the organisation. “Al and Isabel have assembled a stellar team and we are seeking to raise $10m,” a Blue World Alliance representative wrote. “Jeff … no one was higher on that list for seed support from Al and Isabel’s perspective than you.” The DoJ emails do not make it clear whether Epstein made that investment and Isabel declined to comment.

Many suspect that Epstein gathered kompromat on powerful figures – and that Maxwell helped him. “She was a good photographer and had a fantastic set-up,” said Juan Alessi, a former Epstein employee, in evidence at Ghislaine’s 2021 trial in New York. Photography was a “hobby” of hers, he accepted. “She took pictures of everything.”

As The Observer previously reported, Ghislaine used a commercial printer to make thumbprints of thousands of photographs, which she then saved digitally and kept at her New York residence. In a heavily redacted FBI memo from 2021, an agent claimed that photographs including of nude girls were “kept in large binders at Maxwell’s house. There were approximately 8-10 binders of photographs … they were intimate photographs so they would not have been printed commercially.”

Maxwell’s photographs are likely to have included images of President Bill Clinton, who travelled with Maxwell and Epstein to Africa in 2002. In 2011, Epstein asked Ghislaine if she had photographs from their trip. “Somewhere,” she replied. One photograph from the trip shows Clinton lounging in a hot tub with an unknown woman. It is not known who took the picture.

Ghislaine is understood to have taken many of the photos included in a 238-page book for Epstein’s 50th birthday. However, another FBI memo found that there was “no credible evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals” – at least directly. “It’s about collateral. Even if it’s not [explicit], it’s something to hold over them,” said Anna Pasternak, who knew Ghislaine at Oxford. “I suspect it’s something she learned from her father. She grew up in a house which was bugged. All the offices were bugged.”

One of the FBI sources quoted in the memo described how Epstein and Ghislaine were close. “[redacted] recalled Epstein telling her that he delivered the news of Maxwell’s father’s death to her.”

Photographs by Daily Mail / Shutterstock, Imago/Alamy, Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg via Getty Images