Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell together in 2005. Photo / Getty
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell together in 2005. Photo / Getty
Ghislaine Maxwell has revealed her vast hidden wealth and claimed that she does not pose a flight risk as she would never abandon her husband, in a plea to a judge to be released from prison in time for Christmas.
The British socialite, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of helping associate Jeffrey Epstein recruit and groom underage girls to engage in illegal sexual acts in the mid-1990s, offered US$28.5 million ($40m) in a fresh application for bail.
Maxwell's spouse, whose name has been redacted from the court documents, is understood by The Telegraph to be Scott Borgerson, an American tech chief executive she married in 2016.
He describes her in the application filed at the US District Court in Manhattan on Monday as a "wonderful and loving person" and laments that their "family" has been split apart.
Maxwell, 58, is being held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn awaiting trial, which is scheduled for July.
Her lawyers presented a substantial proposed bail package - one of the largest offered to a US court in history and dwarfing the $10 million bond put forward by Bernard Madoff, the financier accused of one of the biggest frauds in Wall Street history.
More than $22 million of the assets pledged to secure the bond will come from the combined resources of Maxwell and Borgerson, 43, who has two children with a previous wife. The amount represents the couple's declared combined wealth and assets, the court documents state.
At the time of her first bail hearing, 12 days after her arrest on July 2, the government described Maxwell's finances as "opaque" and suggested she potentially had "significant undisclosed wealth."
In the fullest accounting of the heiress's finances to date, she details millions of dollars spread across three properties, $650,000 in jewellery and $500,000 in cash, among other sources of income.
She transferred the majority of her assets to a trust controlled by her spouse shortly after their marriage, which experts say could have been designed to protect her financially from any claims lodged by alleged victims of Epstein.
Maxwell says the remainder of the bond would be posted by seven close family and friends, whose names have also been redacted. It states some of them are UK residents - thought to be her brothers.
"If Ms Maxwell was to flee, she would be leaving behind the family that has been the center of her life, she would be abandoning her spouse, who is already suffering without her presence," the filing says.
Audrey Strauss, acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York, points to a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell during a news conference. Photo / AP
Borgerson, in a letter to Judge Alison Nathan, appealed for his wife's release: "The person described in the criminal charges is not the person we know. I have never witnessed anything inappropriate with Ghislaine; quite the contrary, the Ghislaine I know is a wonderful and loving person.
"I believe that Ghislaine had nothing to do with Epstein's crimes," he added.
Her lawyers, Christian Everdell, Mark Cohen, Jeffrey Pagliuca and Laura Menninger, hope that detailing Maxwell's connections with the US and her relationship with her husband, which she failed to mention in the first application for bail, will help her secure release.
Maxwell's defence claimed, however, that if the names were made public, they would be "subjected to some of the same relentless and harassing media intrusion and personal threats that Ms Maxwell has experienced for years."
Her lawyers state that is why her "spouse" was not included in the first request for bail.
"In the three months after her arrest, Ms Maxwell was the subject of over 6500 national media articles," they write. "That exceeds the number of articles that mentioned such high-profile defendants as Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera, and Keith Raniere in the 90-day period following their arrests, combined."
British-born Maxwell, a naturalised US citizen who has lived in America for almost 30 years, said she was also prepared to waive her right to contest extradition to the UK and France, where she has citizenship.
She said she would agree to live at a New York City residence under house arrest and 24-hour surveillance until her trial.
"Ms Maxwell wants to stay in New York and have her day in court so that she can clear her name and return to her family," the filing said.
"The notion that Ms Maxwell could somehow flee to a foreign country during a worldwide pandemic, while being supervised and monitored 24 hours a day and with the eyes of the global press corps on her every minute, without being caught, is absurd."
Maxwell's lawyers point to the release on bail of high-profile defendants with financial means and foreign citizenship on smaller bonds with less or no security with similar or less restrictive conditions, including Madoff, late Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and Ali Sadr, a banker accused of violating US sanctions by funnelling money to Iranian entities.
They also sought to highlight what they described as weaknesses in the prosecution's case, claiming the allegations against her are "based on the uncorroborated testimony of a handful of witnesses about events that took place over 25 years ago."
