Two hours. That's all it took for a pair of congressmen to find six names theDepartment of Justicehad hidden from the public.
Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, stood on the House floor on 10 February and read those names aloud.
Among them: Leslie Wexner, the 88-year-old billionaire behind Victoria's Secret, and Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, CEO of Dubai-based logistics firm DP World. Both men had their identities blacked out when federal agencies released millions of pages tied to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
'If we found six men that they were hiding in two hours, imagine how many men they are covering up for in those 3 million files,' Khanna said.
The most damaging detail sits in a 15 August 2019FBI documentfrom the bureau's Criminal Investigative Division. Five days after Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail cell, the agency listed eight people as 'co-conspirators'. Wexner was one of them. So were Ghislaine Maxwell, now serving 20 years for sex trafficking, and late modelling agent Jean-Luc Brunel.
A separateFBIemail from that same month called Wexner a 'secondary co-conspirator' while noting there was 'limited evidence' of his involvement. He was served a subpoena.
Wexner's legal team pushed back hard. A representative told CBS News that prosecutors informed his counsel in 2019 that 'Mr. Wexner was being viewed as a source of information about Epstein and was not a target in any respect.' The billionaire has long said he cut ties with Epstein after the 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution. He's scheduled to face the House Oversight Committee on 18 February.
Bin Sulayem's name appears more than 4,700 times in the released files. The Emirati businessman, whose company moves roughly 10% of global container trade, exchanged messages with Epstein for years after the conviction.
One email stands out. On 24 April 2009, Epstein wrote: 'where are you? are you ok, I loved the torture video.' The recipient's identity was redacted. Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who reviewed unredacted files alongside Khanna, said the DOJ 'tacitly admitted that Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem was the sender of the torture video.'
It's unclear what that video showed. But the fallout has been swift. Canada's second-largest pension fund, La Caisse, announced it was pausing all future investments with DP World. Britain's BII investment arm followed. 'We are shocked by the allegations,' a BII spokesperson told Reuters.
Source: International Business Times UK
