Maxwell case: prosecutors suggest dropping charges against upholding judgment

Two accusations of false testimony concerning the figure of the jet set Ghislaine Maxwell could be dropped in the United States in exchange for maintaining a guilty judgment against her for sex trafficking, prosecutors proposed Monday (January 10).

Read also Epstein affair: silences and shadows at the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell

The daughter of the former British media baron Robert Maxwell, 60 years old and incarcerated in New York since 2020, will see her sentence pronounced on a date not yet fixed.

She faces decades of prison in this scandal which has splashed the British Prince Andrew and other personalities.

Found guilty

She was found guilty on December 29, 2021 of five counts of sex crimes, including the sex trafficking of minors between 1994 and 2004 for the benefit of the American billionaire Jeffrey Epstein who committed suicide in prison in August 2019. But his lawyers last week called for a new trial on the grounds that one of the jurors allegedly influenced the rest of the jury by revealing that he himself had been the victim of sexual abuse.

The lawyers of Ghislaine Maxwell, who has triple British, American and French nationality, rely in particular on an article in the Daily Mail in which one of the jurors confides in having summoned his memories of a victim during the deliberations to enlighten the rest of the jury . According to court documents dated Jan. 10, prosecutors responded by offering to drop, in exchange for upholding the sex crimes judgment, two false testimony charges against Ghislaine Maxwell.

The latter had been charged with false testimony, in particular for a deposition of April 2016, made public in October 2020, in which she denied ever having helped the deceased financier to sexually exploit minors, ensuring that she had only recruited "

”to work in its luxury properties. Each of these false testimony charges is punishable by up to five years in prison.

"

", according to one letter from prosecutors to Judge Alison Nathan.

Last week, the judge set January 19 for consideration of the defense request with a February 2 deadline for the prosecution to respond.

To read also "I was petrified of fear": behind the scenes of the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell

At the same time, a Manhattan federal court judge promised he would rule "

" in a civil lawsuit against Prince Andrew for "

" on an American, Virginia Giuffre - also one of the accusers of Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, over 20 years ago when she was a minor.

The prince's camp has been doing everything for six months to convince American justice to drop the civil complaint that Virginia Giuffre filed in New York in August.