LONDON — The global fallout from the Epstein files widened Wednesday, with French authorities urging survivors to come forward and British police assessing private flights to and from London connected to the late financier and convicted sex offender.
The U.S. Department of Justice's release of 3.5 million files surrounding Jeffrey Epstein has already led to high-profile arrests, resignations and investigations across Europe and beyond.
On Wednesday, Paris Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau opened two new lines of inquiry, one into alleged human trafficking and the other into possible financial wrongdoing related to Epstein.
This was in the hopes that some victims "may come forward even though they had not done so in previous years," an official at the prosecutor's office told NBC News, while law enforcement specialists undertake the "titanic task" of reviewing the files.
Five magistrates will be appointed to act as "entry points for the various complaints, reports, and any other information that is communicated to us, so that we can pool them and ensure that no information is missed," the official added.
The investigation into possible financial crimes will involve the National Financial Prosecutor's Office, which earlier this month opened a separate investigation into former French Culture Minister Jack Lang, 86, in connection with suspected "laundering of the proceeds of tax evasion" after reporting from French investigative outlet Mediapart about a company set up jointly by Epstein and Lang's daughter in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Lang subsequently resigned as president of the Arab World Institute, a prestigious Paris research institute whose headquarters were searched by French police on Monday.
He denied the accusations, saying in a Feb. 7 statement that he welcomed the investigation with "serenity and even relief" and hoped it would "allow us to shed full light on accusations concerning attacks on my integrity and honor."
Meanwhile in Britain, police on Wednesday confirmed that they were assessing revelations from the files about Epstein-related flights that had used Stansted Airport, northeast of London.
"We are assessing the information that has emerged in relation to private flights into and out of Stansted Airport following the publication of the U.S. DoJ Epstein files," a spokesperson for Essex Police, which covers that region, said in a statement.
Last year, an investigation by the BBC found that 87 Epstein-related flights had arrived at or departed from British airports between the early 1990s and 2018.
Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister, last week criticized a historical "systematic failure" in Britain to monitor Epstein's "three-decades-long criminal enterprise."
Writing in The New Statesman, a left-wing political magazine, he alleged that Stansted was "where women were transferred from one Epstein plane to another," citing the files and the BBC's findings of "incomplete flight logs" that did not include the names of some passengers, both male and female.
A search of the DOJ's Epstein Library returned 88 mentions of the word "Stansted," including discussions over fuel charges and flight manifestos.
Stansted Airport said in a statement that it was not responsible for handling private flights, which instead go through independent operators. For visas and border checks, it referred NBC News to the U.K. Border Force, which in turn referred to its statement from Thursday.
"All individuals arriving in the United Kingdom, regardless of how they enter, are subject to thorough checks," it said. "Entry may be refused if a person has a criminal conviction, a history of serious or persistent offending, or has failed to declare previous convictions." The statement did not address passengers who change planes within U.K. airports without entering the country.
British police have already set up a national coordination group, which they say will look at Epstein's ties to Britain and its prominent figures.
A National Police Chiefs’ Council spokesperson said investigations "may take some time due to the volume of material and the complexity of international jurisdictions, but policing and its law enforcement partners are taking this matter extremely seriously, and will assess all information thoroughly."
Thames Valley Police, which covers an area northwest of London, said it is assessing allegations of "misconduct in a public office" against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who has been stripped of his title as Prince Andrew and remains under intense scrutiny over his friendship with Epstein. He denies wrongdoing.
London's Metropolitan Police earlier this month launched an investigation into Peter Mandelson, who was fired as Britain's ambassador to the United States after the files revealed more details about his friendship with Epstein. The force said it had launched an investigation into "alleged misconduct in public office," though in line with British policing convention it did not name Mandelson, who has previously denied any knowledge of Epstein's crimes.
Other prominent figures embroiled in the files include former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland, who was charged with “gross corruption” on Thursday over his relationship with Epstein, according to the country's financial police, and Miroslav Lajčák, the national security adviser to Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. Lajčák resigned after the files showed email exchanges between him and Epstein.
Both former officials have denied criminal wrongdoing, though Lajcak accepted he had shown "poor judgment." Jagland told Aftenposten he is "very glad that the matter is being clarified" and plans to fully cooperate with the authorities.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Saturday that her agency has now released all of the files required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, although some lawmakers have complained that the disclosures do not go far enough.
A panel of independent United Nations experts said Monday that the alleged crimes contained within the documents are "so grave" that "a number of them may reasonably meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity."
