TheBadPlacebing news | French authorities search Paris arm of Swiss bank Edmond de Rothschild in Epstein-linked probe
French financial prosecutors announced Tuesday that they had carried out searches at several sites, including the Paris office of Swiss private bank Edmond de Rothschild, as part of a probe triggered by revelations in the Jeffrey Epstein files. The raids, conducted last Friday, are part of a preliminary investigation opened last month after a referral from France’s Foreign Ministry. investigators are examining possible bribery involving a foreign public official and alleged complicity concerning former French diplomat Fabrice Aidan. The case is being handled by France’s central office for combating corruption and tax‑ and financial‑offence investigations.
French outlet Mediapart reported that the released documents suggested Aidan may have supplied confidential United Nations material to Epstein. Over 200 files, including emails sent between 2010 and 2016 from both personal and UN accounts, link Aidan to Epstein and raise suspicions that he shared diplomatic documents with the financier. Aidan’s lawyer has denied any wrongdoing and urged respect for the presumption of innocence, while Aidan himself has also rejected the allegations.
The Epstein disclosures have already rattled France’s political and cultural elite. The disgraced U.S. financier, who died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex‑trafficking charges, has been at the center of a wave of investigations. Earlier this year former Culture Minister Jack Lang resigned as head of the Arab World Institute after prosecutors opened a preliminary tax‑fraud probe linked to the same files, making him the most prominent French figure affected by the scandal to date.
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French prosecutors search Paris arm of Swiss bank in Epstein-linked probe
French financial prosecutors say searches were carried out at several locations, including the Paris arm of Swiss private bank Edmond de Rothschild, as part of an investigation tied to revelations from the Jeffrey Epstein files. France’s national financial prosecutor’s office said in a statement Tuesday that searches were carried out Friday. It said they were part of a preliminary investigation opened Feb. 17 into suspected bribery of a foreign public official and complicity which concerns former French diplomat Fabrice Aidan. The investigation was opened after a referral from France’s Foreign Ministry and follows revelations published in the Epstein files and subsequent reporting in France.