Epstein housed victims in London flats after Met chose not to investigate him, BBC reveals

Sex-criminal financier Jeffrey Epstein housed women he allegedly abused in several London flats in the years after UK police decided not to investigate him, a BBC investigation has revealed.

We found evidence of four flats, rented in the affluent borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in receipts, emails and bank records contained within the Epstein files. Six of the women housed in them have since come forward as victims of Epstein's abuse.

Many of them - from Russia, eastern Europe and elsewhere - were brought to the UK after the Metropolitan Police decided not to investigate Virginia Giuffre's 2015 allegation that she had been a victim of international trafficking to London.

The Met said it followed "reasonable lines of inquiry" at the time, interviewing Giuffre on multiple occasions following her complaint and co-operating with US investigators.

Some of the women housed in the London flats were coerced by Epstein to recruit others into his sex trafficking scheme, as well as regularly transported to Paris by Eurostar to visit him, according to emails in the files.

The BBC searched through millions of pages of records gathered by the US Department of Justice in its investigation of the disgraced financier, and released as part of the Epstein files, in order to piece together the most detailed picture yet of his operation in the UK.

It shows how the operation grew more extensive than was previously known - with more victims, established infrastructure such as housing, and frequent transportation of women across borders - right up to Epstein's death, despite warnings to UK police.

We are not publishing any details about the young women to protect their anonymity as the victims of sexual abuse.

Our investigation found British police had other opportunities to open an inquiry into the disgraced financier's activities in the UK, in addition to Giuffre's complaint that she had been trafficked and forced to have sex with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in 2001. Mountbatten-Windsor has always denied any wrongdoing.

By early 2020, a second woman had complained to the Met that she had been abused by Epstein in the UK, the BBC has established. It is not clear whether this complaint was acted on.

British authorities also knew in 2020, soon after Epstein died in jail awaiting trial, that the financier had rented at least one of the flats identified by the BBC, according to a document in the files.

Tessa Gregory, a human rights lawyer with Leigh Day, told the BBC she was "staggered" no UK police investigation had ever been launched, after we showed her examples of our findings.

"Where there are credible allegations of human trafficking, the UK state, even if no victims come forward, has a positive legal obligation to conduct a prompt, effective and independent investigation," she said.

The Met said: "We recognise our duties within Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights and are confident these were fulfilled." Article 4 is the right to freedom from slavery and forced labour.

Kevin Hyland, a former senior detective with the Met Police who was the UK's first Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, told us police missed opportunities to investigate the convicted sex offender.

"People are outraged that somebody came forward and said, 'I was trafficked by this man', and yet he was just allowed to carry on. Who in the police made that decision?" he said.

Hyland said that based on his experience investigating human trafficking, officers could have worked with travel companies to keep tabs on the credit cards and IP addresses - the unique identifiers assigned to devices using the internet - of people who frequently booked tickets for groups of single women.

"Epstein's dead. But it's clear that he wasn't acting alone. Who else was involved and what offences could they have committed? And of course, importantly, is this still going on with others?" he said.

Jeffrey Epstein, landlord

Just a few months before his arrest on charges of trafficking children for sex, and his death in jail awaiting trial, our investigation found that Epstein was messaging a young Russian woman on Skype who was living in one of the London flats he paid for.

He sent her an image which is not included in the files but which seems to have been a picture of himself. The woman jokingly asked who the good-looking man in the picture was.

Epstein said it was her landlord - but said that unlike most landlords, he pays rather than collecting the rent.

The woman later went on to ask Epstein for money to pay for her English classes in London and to help buy cutlery and furniture for the apartment. She also asked for visa advice for another Russian woman who was due to come and stay.

The 2019 exchange reveals how Epstein remained in touch with the women he housed in London right up until his arrest and death in jail, and how involved he was in the detail of their lives.

In contrast to the photos released in the Epstein files, which are often decades old, we found the women housed by him in London pictured in Instagram posts, on Russian social media and in high-end fashion shoots.

The exterior of the flat mentioned in the Skype chat is pictured in one of these photographs. In the background a doorbell with the name of the building is visible, which enabled us to find the tenancy agreement in the Epstein files.

A shipment of gifts recorded in the files led us to another apartment. Details of yet another, rented in 2018 and 2019, were buried in a 10,000-page credit card bill. It also recorded the daily living expenses of the woman staying there, who had her own card on Epstein's account with a $2,000 (£1,477) monthly allowance.

The fourth flat was mentioned in emails between Epstein, one of the women and the letting agents.

Despite their desirable addresses, the flats were sometimes crowded, with the women having to sleep on sofas. On some occasions, Epstein responded angrily when the women complained about the living conditions, emails show.

In one case, Epstein said he would pay a woman's rent as a "gift" if she worked for him for six months, but otherwise he would consider it a loan that needed to be repaid. In another message, Epstein swore at the woman, called her "rude" and said she had "disgusting behaviour", telling her she was a "brat who has yet to accept responsibility".

Other women living in the flats were coerced to "work" for him to build his sex-trafficking scheme by recruiting other women, we found.

One sent Epstein pictures of "cute" models she had just met in London. Epstein indicated he approved of their appearance and the woman said she would check if they were suitable for him. It is not clear whether any of these models were eventually introduced to Epstein.

Epstein also paid for at least five women - many of whom were in the UK on student visas - to study in London.

The files show receipts of payments for course fees at English language colleges and discussions with a woman about one of Epstein's companies acting as her financial sponsor for a university-level art course.

Epstein used the Eurostar to move some of these women and others in and out of the UK uninterrupted up until his arrest by US authorities in July 2019. The number of tickets he purchased for young women steadily increased in the final years of his life.

We found Epstein purchased at least 53 tickets to transport women between France and England from 2011 to 2019, sometimes taking advantage of Eurostar's reduced "youth" fares for under-25s.

Receipts in the files show 33 of the tickets were purchased after Giuffre made her 2015 complaint of trafficking. In the last six months of his life, Epstein moved women in and out of London by Eurostar 10 times - with one woman being transported to London just 16 days before his arrest.

Some of the women transported by Eurostar later came forward as victims of Epstein, their lawyers confirmed to us.

In February, the Paris prosecutor's office opened two investigations into Epstein's activities in France, focusing on human trafficking and money laundering. Officials said three women had come forward with complaints against people in Epstein's circle.

Who worked for Epstein in the UK?

Several people in the UK who worked for Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell - his accomplice in trafficking, who is now serving 20 years in a US prison - have been identified by the BBC.

They include a man who we believe was one of Epstein and Maxwell's drivers and a woman who worked as Maxwell's assistant.

A woman who has been described as a member of Epstein's household staff during the 2000s also moved to the UK and remained in close contact with him. She appears in the files in FedEx parcel invoices and flight records and would often write affectionate emails to Epstein, telling him in 2016: "I always think of you. All my love always".

We contacted these people to try to ask them what they knew.

The driver did not respond and blocked us on WhatsApp. And at the address of Maxwell's former assistant, we found an empty house with builders' ladders and sacks of rubble outside.

At the east London block of flats which we believed was the home of the former member of Epstein's household staff, we pressed the buzzer and asked for her.

"Who?" came back the answer. After we repeated our request, the woman inside the flat just said "Ooop" before falling silent. The light on the doorbell camera remained on, indicating she was still watching us.

She never asked us why the BBC was at her door and did not deny she was the person we were looking for. We left a letter in her mailbox with our contact details, but she did not respond.

What did UK authorities know?

In statements issued in 2016, 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2025 the Metropolitan Police said it believed "that other international authorities were best placed to progress" the allegations about Epstein.

The Met said officers interviewed Ms Giuffre three times in 2015 and 2016 and said they contacted several other potential victims, but "no allegation of criminal conduct was made against any UK-based individual".

The force said it had "maintained close liaison with the United States and other relevant authorities throughout their investigation" to make sure "any UK matters could be identified and to consider any support requested".

Other British authorities were aware of some of Epstein's activities in the UK and passed them on to the FBI, emails in the files show.

In a 2020 memo to the FBI, the National Crime Agency (NCA) highlighted Epstein-related allegations against Clare Hazell, the Countess of Iveagh, a socialite who married into the Guinness family and who reportedly flew on the financier's private jet more than 30 times.

The memo also says Hazell, who died of brain cancer last year, was accused of sexual abuse by someone whose name is redacted, despite the Met's claim that there were no allegations against UK-based individuals. Virginia Giuffre later made public accusations against Hazell.

Emails in the files also show that the NCA sent financial intelligence about Epstein's UK transactions to the FBI in the same year. Among them are payments to a Coutts bank account for the rent of one the Chelsea flats where he housed abuse victims.

The NCA told us it does not routinely comment on "the exchange of information with international partners".

A Met Police spokesperson said it was "fully engaged" alongside other forces in the National Police Chiefs' Council group established following the release of the Epstein files.

This includes an "assessment of information which indicates that London airports may have been used as transit points in the facilitation of sexual exploitation and human trafficking" which is "ongoing", the Met said.

The Met did not respond directly to our findings from the files about the London flats and Eurostar tickets.

Lisa Phillips, an Epstein survivor, told BBC Newsnight last week that "a lot of women came forward in the UK whether through their attorney, or through the Metropolitan Police, or their local police station" and is calling for a public inquiry because "we can find out what went wrong and how to prevent it in the future".

Tessa Gregory, the human rights lawyer, said the state needed to be held accountable and a statutory public inquiry would have the power to compel witnesses and look at these issues in detail.

"Where the allegations span so many years and involve public figures and institutions, there are probably wider questions that the state also needs to address, such as how did this go undetected for so long?" she said.

After the Epstein files were released in January, several police forces across the UK, including the Met, confirmed they were either making enquiries or assessing information before deciding whether to open an investigation.

But Hyland, the former anti-slavery commissioner, said: "I don't know what that is. You're either investigating it or you're not."

He said with the complaint of trafficking and the details of London properties there was "more than enough to start an investigation".