Ghislaine Maxwell is selling her home in London – where Prince Andrew was infamously photographed with an accuser Jeffrey Epstein – to raise money for legal costs, her spokeswoman said.
The sale of the British society’s Kinnerton Street apartment in London’s elegant Belgravia is nearing completion, spokesman Brian Basham told the Wall Street Journal.
He refused to identify the buyer or the sale price.
The estimated value of the elegant home, which is just a few blocks south of Hyde Park, is £ 1.9 million – about $ 2.7 million, according to British real estate site The Move Market. It was last sold in 1997.
Other properties in Belgravia have sold for between $ 3.6 million and $ 11.2 million in the past two years.
The lucrative deal would add to the $ 7 million Maxwell has already set aside for his defense fund – pushing the total to more than $ 10 million, Basham told the Telegraph.
“Ghislaine will be sad to see the house sold,” Basham told the store. “She is devastated by all this. He will have a lot of good memories. It will be terribly sad to sell the house. It was her refuge in London. “
Epstein’s accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, claims that she was brought to Maxwell’s house in London in 2001 and forced to have sex with Prince Andrew when she was 17 years old.
A photo of the couple taken at home – with Maxwell smiling in the background – frequently appeared as news of Epstein’s alleged sex crimes exploded around the world.
Prince Andrew rejected the allegations.
Both Andrew and Ian Maxwell, Ghislaine’s brother, also suggested that the current photo was fake.
The sale of Maxwell’s house is finally nearing completion after hitting an obstacle in February, when her bank, Barclays, closed its account a day after lawyers deposited 130,000 pounds (about $ 180,000). , the Wall Street Journal reported.
The deposit was an initial deposit from the buyer.
In a revised letter from the Journal, Barclays warned the buyer against putting the bank in a position where “it could violate a law, regulation, code or other fees”.
Ian Maxwell accused Barclays of shutting down his sister’s story as a way to protect his chief executive, Jes Staley – who had visited the Caribbean island of Epstein in the past.
But Basham said the Maxwell family had found a way to get the business done.
“We have no idea what Staley did to Epstein, but whatever it was, it’s his problem and he shouldn’t take his problems with my sister,” Ian Maxwell told the Journal. “Staley is playing at Pontius Pilate with my sister’s life.”
Maxwell has been held in federal custody in Brooklyn since her arrest last July on charges of helping to recruit and care for young women and girls to have sex with Epstein. Prosecutors also claimed that she herself had participated in some abuses.
Her trial is set to begin in July in federal court in Manhattan.
Epstein, 66, hanged himself behind bars in Manhattan in 2019 – about a month after he was arrested on charges of sex trafficking.
Additional reporting by Mary K. Jacob