Ghislaine Maxwell offers to renounce her UK and French citizenship for bail

British socialite, Ghislaine Maxwell who is due to stand trial in July, has offered to give up her UK and French citizenship in exchange for bail, and according to a court filing, her lawyers said she had no desire to leave the US. She would be willing to renounce her foreign citizenship “ to eliminate any opportunity for her to seek refuge in those countries” the filing added. Ms. Maxwell has been in jail in Brooklyn, New York since she was arrested last July at her secluded mansion in the state of New Hampshire. This is her third application for bail after two previous attempts failed. In her last bid for bail in December, her lawyers proposed that she be allowed to return home with armed guards to prevent her from escaping, but the prosecutors then said there was a risk that, if bailed, Ms. Maxwell could use her wealth to flee to France or the UK where she is a citizen and suggested might try to avoid extradition. She faces up to 35 years in prison if convicted in her trial in July.

Oxford-educated Ghislaine Maxwell, who speaks several languages, former girlfriend of disgraced Us financier Jeffrey Epstein and daughter of newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell his ninth and youngest child, born on Christmas Day in 1961 outside Paris. She faces charges in the US after being arrested by the FBI on suspicion of having assisted Epstein’s abuse of minors by helping to recruit and groom victims known to be underage. Four of the six charges relate to the years 1994-98 when she was, according to the indictment, among Epstein’s associates and also in an intimate relationship with him. The other two charges are allegations of perjury in 2016. Epstein died in a New York prison cell on 10 August as he awaited, without the chance of bail, his trial on sex trafficking charges.

Details of the allegations against Ms. Maxwell emerged earlier in documents unsealed by a US judge in August 2019 in a 2015 defamation case. Virginia Giuffre, an alleged victim of Epstein, accused Ms. Maxwell of recruiting her as a masseuse to the financier at the age of 15, who sued Maxwell in 2015 for defamation – a case which has since been settled after the media heiress said Ms. Giuffre was a liar. Maxwell denies any wrongdoing.

Maxwell is a well-connected socialite who is said to have introduced Epstein to many of her wealthy and powerful friends, including Bill Clinton and the Duke of York ( who was accused in the court papers of touching a woman at Jeffrey Epstein’s US home, although subsequently struck out allegations against the Duke).