Jean-Luc Brunel, the previous French mannequin company boss and affiliate of the late intercourse offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, has been discovered lifeless in his cell within the Paris jail of La Santé.
Paris prosecutors confirmed on Saturday that they have been investigating the reason for his loss of life in a single day on Friday.
Brunel was detained at Charles de Gaulle airport on his solution to Senegal in December 2020 and positioned underneath formal investigation for “rape of a minor over 15 and sexual harassment”.
On the time the prosecutors mentioned: “He’s suspected of getting dedicated rape, sexual aggression and sexual harassment on completely different victims, underage and grownup, and specifically of getting organised the transport and housing of younger ladies or younger ladies for Jeffrey Epstein.”
Epstein died in jail in 2019 in what was dominated to be suicide after being arrested on US federal fees of trafficking underage ladies.
Virginia Giuffre, certainly one of Epstein’s accusers, named Brunel as one of many males she was directed to have intercourse with by Epstein’s confidante Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell was convicted in December on 5 of six felony fees by a New York jury for her position in procuring underage ladies for Epstein to abuse. She is interesting towards the decision.
Giuffre additionally mentioned she had been pressured by Epstein and Maxwell to have intercourse with the UK’s Prince Andrew on three events when she was underneath 18. She filed a civil lawsuit towards the prince, which he settled this week with out admitting guilt however with a “substantial donation” to a victims charity run by Giuffre.
Brunel, who headed the Karin Fashions and MC2 companies in Paris, was pursued by French prosecutors after they launched their very own inquiry into Epstein — who saved a luxurious flat on the Avenue Foch — in August 2019.
Allegations that Brunel had trafficked younger fashions had been within the public area for greater than 30 years, however the Epstein case within the US and rising issues in France concerning the nation’s beforehand lenient strategy to intercourse between older males and minors introduced him into the general public eye once more and attracted the eye of the authorities.
His legal professionals mentioned on Saturday that Brunel was the sufferer of a questionable “media-judicial system” and had lengthy declared his innocence.
After being briefly launched final 12 months after which reincarcerated, Brunel had launched an attraction to be freed. “He was motivated not by guilt however by a profound sense of injustice,” the legal professionals mentioned.