By Tom Sims, Naomi Rovnick, John O'Donnell and Lawrence White
FRANKFURT/LONDON, March 27 - In rural New Hampshire, a compound on a 156‑acre estate dubbed “Tucked Away” became Ghislaine Maxwell’s final residence before she was charged and arrested in July 2020.
Behind the cash purchase of the $1.1 million home in December 2019 were funds sent by Swiss banking giant UBS on Maxwell’s behalf a month earlier, documents in a cache of files released by the Department of Justice related to the convicted sex
offender Jeffrey Epstein show. The money then cascaded through a web of trusts and banks to buy the secluded property as she sought to go into hiding.
UBS processed the transfer for an account linked to Maxwell three months after U.S. criminal investigators issued the bank a grand jury subpoena to divulge information on all her financial dealings on August 16 that year, citing an investigation into sex trafficking of children. UBS told Maxwell by email on August 1 that it would cease doing business with her within a month, without giving a reason.
Banks are required to show they take measures to prevent their services being used to facilitate crime. Failures can lead to large penalties by regulators, legal action from victims and costly reputational damage. Lenders must closely monitor high-risk customers and curb or cut their services if they suspect dubious activities.
Together with other transactions and investigators' reports, the documents underscore the central role UBS played in managing the finances of Epstein’s chief accomplice, whose proximity to the convicted felon had been reported years before the wealth manager had taken her on as a client.
The files shed rare light on how banks deal with rich customers and can ignore some of the red flags that might disqualify a regular client, said Tom Kirchmaier, a financial crime expert with the London School of Economics.
"Banks that are told of a secret criminal inquiry, as UBS was, typically do everything they can to find publicly available information to justify holding up the suspect’s money," he said.
In the Southern District of New York subpoena, the U.S. attorney told UBS the information was part of a criminal "felony" investigation, requesting it to keep the request secret in case a disclosure would "impede" the probe, the files show.
Epstein had died in jail days earlier, on August 10, as he faced sex trafficking charges.
UBS declined to comment on Maxwell or respond to Reuters' questions about why the bank processed the payment, saying that it does not speak about client-related matters.
Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence for recruiting and grooming teenage girls for sex, as well as for participating in the abuse of minor victims in some instances. Her lawyers had argued at that trial she was scapegoated for Epstein's crimes. A spokesperson for the prison where she is staying said Maxwell would not comment.
David Oscar Markus, the criminal defense attorney who last month represented Maxwell in a deposition to the House Oversight Committee, declined to comment.
“The pattern we’ve seen from our investigations of Epstein and a lot of other high-net-worth criminals is that the banks look the other way because they know ultra-wealthy clients can pack up and take their money across the street any time they want," said Senator Ron Wyden, who has scrutinized the money flows from Epstein's crimes.
“Ghislaine Maxwell wasn’t just some minor accessory to Epstein’s crimes, she was an essential part of his trafficking operation that reached all around the globe, and she’s accused of participating in abuse herself," Wyden said.
While information on Epstein's financial dealings remains incomplete, the files show he maintained access to major Wall Street firms well after his 2008 conviction: Deutsche Bank continued servicing Epstein's accounts into 2019 even after moving to cut ties, while Morgan Stanley opened accounts for Epstein-linked trusts as late as March of that year, Reuters has reported.
JOURNALIST JANET
Maxwell was arrested by FBI agents forcing entry into the compound at the end of a half-mile dirt driveway with "No Trespassing" signs, on the outskirts of Bradford, a small town known for its colonial white homes and horse farms.
Maxwell used the name Janet Marshall and posed as a journalist "who wants privacy" to buy the house when she met with the realtor, according to court documents from a bail hearing.
During her arrest, FBI agents discovered a mobile phone covered in aluminum foil to avoid being traced and a security team staffed by former British military members that had been hired to guard Maxwell during her stay there, the court documents show.
A document by federal U.S. investigators probing Maxwell's money links UBS to the New Hampshire hideout. The file, dated April 12, 2022, includes a flow chart detailing the wire transfers entitled “338 Washington Rd Bradford NH," a reference to the address of her home, Tucked Away.
The document states that the information is based on U.S. Treasury financial‑crime records and is marked “sensitive".
It shows UBS transferred nearly $8 million on November 12, 2019, from an account held for Montpelier Trust, an entity set up by Maxwell as its so-called grantor. Her then-husband Scott Borgerson was one of the trustees, UBS records show. The cash went to a TD Ameritrade account, of which Borgerson was the custodian.
Days before the transfer, on November 6, 2019, UBS was still in discussions with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on documents it would send as requested by the grand jury subpoena of August. Reuters could not establish if UBS alerted the authorities to the $8 million transfer.
Banks operating in the U.S. are obliged to inform the U.S. Treasury of suspicious transactions related to a possible regulatory or legal violation within 30 days.
TD Ameritrade sent the money to a trust that was used to buy the house in Bradford, New Hampshire. TD Ameritrade has since been taken over by Charles Schwab, which declined to comment.
$22.5 MILLION WEALTH
Maxwell's and Borgerson's combined wealth was estimated at around $22.5 million as of October 2020, according to a report filed to court in the Southern District of New York later that year by accountants hired by her lawyers at Cohen & Gresser.
They found that much of her wealth could be traced to the 2015 sale of a town house on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for $15 million.
It remains unclear how she came to own the house and what, if any, due diligence UBS carried out when more than $14 million went into her bank account in 2016.
The accountants' report stated the proceeds went to a UBS account and from there to other UBS accounts to buy properties.
The Swiss lender held accounts with cash, shares and other investments for Maxwell, and assigned her two relationship managers during her time as a customer, documents show. At one point the bank was managing $19 million for her, Reuters reported in February.
Maxwell and Borgerson still held $4.1 million at UBS at the end of October 2020, according to the accountants.
Borgerson didn't respond to a request for comment.
Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), which banks use to alert authorities to suspect money movement, shed some light on Maxwell's dealings.
In the email correspondence between the FBI and federal law enforcement in April 2022, the agencies discuss a SAR that suggests the New Hampshire property "was purchased with proceeds from Human Trafficking." It is unclear which bank alerted regulators to the irregularity of the transaction.
After her arrest, UBS filed a SAR covering more than $18 million worth of transfers from her accounts at the Swiss bank to Borgerson between December 2014 and July 10, 2020, according to an untitled and undated document summarizing several such filings.
The U.S. Justice and Treasury Departments declined to comment on Maxwell, her relationship with UBS, the home purchase and the banking transactions.
British bank Barclays also played an important role for Maxwell, according to the files, as the only lender she held money with outside the U.S. from 2017, according to the report on her wealth.
She had held $2.4 million at the bank at the end of 2018, the reports show.
In the three weeks after Epstein's July 6, 2019, arrest, UBS received more than $600,000 of deposits from her Barclays account as she rounded up money to pay for a credit card bill, email exchanges show.
Barclays declined to comment on its dealings with Maxwell.
It remains unclear how much money Maxwell has left.
Tucked Away has since changed hands, according to property records and real estate agents, and is set to be sold again. Four Seasons Sotheby's International Realty describes it as a privacy-lover's dream.
(Additional reporting by Ariane Luthi in Zurich and Tommy Reggiori Wilkes in London; Editing by Elisa Martinuzzi and Michael Learmonth)
