The agent of French models Jean-Luc Brunel, a relative of the American billionaire Jeffrey Epstein accused of rape by several former top models, was arrested Wednesday in Roissy and placed in police custody, learned, Thursday, December 17, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) corroborating sources.
The septuagenarian was placed in police custody for rape and sexual assault, in particular on minors, sexual harassment, criminal conspiracy and trafficking in human beings, confirmed the Paris prosecutor’s office. According to a source familiar with the matter, he was arrested at Roissy airport as he was about to take a plane to Dakar.
Jean-Luc Brunel, former partner of the Karin Models agency, is suspected of having spotted young women for the American financier Jeffrey Epstein, accused of rape of minors and found dead in prison in early August 2019. The Frenchman has himself was accused of rape by several former top models, including a Dutch woman who is now 46 years old. According to a source close to the AFP investigation, the facts denounced by these ex-models are however prescribed.
Cited in the investigation opened in the United States
A complaint for sexual harassment was filed in October 2019 against the modeling agent for alleged facts after 2015 and which would therefore not be time-barred. The woman at the origin of this complaint, aged about twenty, is the eighth to come to justice.
The name of Jean-Luc Brunel had already been mentioned in the investigation opened in the United States against the multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein. One of the main complainants, Virginia Giuffre, said she was forced to have sex with Mr. Brunel. In a first procedure in the United States, closed in 2007, two women had already accused him of playing the role of tout for Mr. Epstein, bringing young girls from modest backgrounds to the United States by making them dangle a career as a model .
In 2015, at the time cold with Epstein, Jean-Luc Brunel had denounced “Allegations”. Jeffrey Epstein was found dead on August 10, 2019 in his cell in New York City. He was arrested and charged in July for having organized, from 2002 to 2005, a network of young girls with whom he allegedly had coerced sex.
