Manhattan court upholds Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking conviction

Ghislaine Maxwell's 2021 conviction for aiding and abetting the sexual abuse of young girls by disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein has been upheld by a U.S. appeals court.

The decision was announced on Tuesday by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.

Maxwell, 62, is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being found guilty on five counts of recruiting and preparing four underage girls for abuse by Epstein between 1994 and 2004.

The financier committed suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 at the age of 66, five weeks after being arrested and charged with sex trafficking.

Maxwell's appeal focused on a 2007 non-prosecution agreement between Epstein and federal prosecutors in South Florida, which she said prevented her from being prosecuted in Manhattan 13 years later.

Her lawyer argued that the references in Epstein's agreement to the “United States” signaled the government's intent to prevent nationwide prosecutions of “potential co-conspirators,” including four people named in the agreement. Maxwell was not among them.

A prosecutor countered that the mention of the United States was only incidental and that Epstein's agreement was intended to be binding only on prosecutors in South Florida.

In addition, Maxwell argued in her appeal that prosecutors had made her a scapegoat because Epstein was dead and the public demanded that someone else be held accountable.

She also said her trial was rigged because a juror did not disclose that he had been sexually abused as a child.

Epstein eventually pleaded guilty to a Florida state indictment in 2008 and served 13 months in prison, a sentence that is now widely considered too lenient.

His victims have since recovered hundreds of millions of dollars from his estate and from banks accused of facilitating transactions that funded his sexual misconduct.

The scandal has tarnished or destroyed the reputations of former friends, including Britain's Prince Andrew and former Barclays CEO Jes Staley.

Maxwell, who was formerly Epstein's girlfriend, is serving her sentence in a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida. She could be released in July 2037.