Police leaders in the United Kingdom have said they are in touch with overseas law enforcement about millions of documents released by the Justice Department related to the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, but sharing such information between different countries is time-consuming and complex.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council, a consortium of police agencies from around the U.K., has set up a national coordinating group for local police forces investigating Epstein-related claims. A spokesperson for the council said this week that it is working to coordinate information from overseas law enforcement agencies through approved channels.
The spokesperson said it may take time in part because of the “complexity of international jurisdictions, but policing and its law enforcement partners are taking this matter extremely seriously, and will assess all information thoroughly."
“The sharing of documents related to overseas criminal investigations between law enforcement agencies in different countries is an extremely complex process, and not straight forward,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The U.S. and the U.K. have a mutual legal assistance agreement that allows foreign authorities to ask the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs to provide information in support of U.K. investigations. According to legal experts, the U.S. is under no obligation to share potentially criminal findings in its investigations with foreign governments, but it does frequently partner with them.
The Justice Department has not confirmed whether any discussions have taken place or any information has been provided.
The former Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of misconduct in office after weeks of new revelations about his relationship with Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died by suicide in 2019 while he was awaiting trial on federal charges.
Mountbatten-Windsor, the brother of King Charles III, was stripped of his titles last year. He is the highest-profile figure to have faced criminal accusations in a scandal that continues to sweep in some of the world’s richest and most powerful people.
Thames Valley Police said this month that they were looking into a claim that the former prince, while he was serving as U.K. trade envoy in 2010, had shared sensitive documents with Epstein.
An email in the latest U.S. release appears to show Mountbatten-Windsor forwarding Epstein a report from his special adviser about the then-prince’s visit to Southeast Asia.
Mountbatten-Windsor, who turned 66 on Thursday, has always denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. The king expressed his “deepest concern” at the news Thursday and stressed that “the law must take its course.”
The release of the Epstein files under a federal law signed by President Donald Trump was a significant departure from standard Justice Department protocols. The Justice Department does not usually release raw investigative materials en masse, and the handling of sensitive materials produced in discovery in the course of a trial is typically governed by court-imposed protective orders.
It would not be standard practice for the U.S. to share raw investigative files with a foreign entity without a formal request, just as it would not be Justice Department practice to release derogatory information about someone who was not charged with a crime.
Before the documents were publicly released, the Justice Department and the FBI said investigators “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
“We found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials,” according to the joint statement detailing their review of the documents.
But the release of millions of documents related to Epstein has had worldwide implications. In Norway, the economic crimes unit has opened a corruption investigation into former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland over his ties with Epstein. His lawyer said Jagland would cooperate with the probe, according to The Associated Press.
And Paris Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau this week opened two new lines of inquiry, one into allegations of human trafficking and the other into possible financial wrongdoing related to Epstein.
The Justice Department has similar agreements with Norway and France, as well as many other countries. The Justice Department has not commented on whether those countries have reached out.
In 2020, federal prosecutors in New York formally requested through the British government to speak with Mountbatten-Windsor as part of the criminal investigation into Epstein’s history of abuse, NBC News reported at the time. He repeatedly refused to go in for testimony, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Then-U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman called out Mountbatten-Windsor at a news conference, saying “he publicly offered, indeed in a press release, offered to cooperate with law enforcement investigating the crimes committed by Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators,” but, Berman later added, he had provided “zero cooperation.”
According to emails in the Epstein files, London's Metropolitan Police sought help from an FBI agent in November who had been working out of London and who had done work related to Epstein in 2021. Another agent took over the job and said they would be happy to chat, according to the emails. It is not clear whether a conversation occurred.
Mountbatten-Windsor stepped back from active royal duties in 2019, and in 2022 he reached a legal settlement with Virginia Roberts Giuffre for an undisclosed amount after she filed a lawsuit in 2021 alleging that she was trafficked by Epstein and that the former prince sexually abused her when she was 17. He has denied having had sex with Giuffre.
