JERSEY has been highlighted in a damning Miami Herald report, after documents reportedly found in an Island manor house linked a former local trust company to the family of Jeffrey Epstein’s long-time lover and sex trafficking co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
The documents relate to La Hougue Trust, and were reportedly found ten years ago by heiress Tanya Dick-Stock at St John’s Manor, a 58-acre country home where she spent part of her childhood with her father, then Seigneur John Dick. The trust was based out of the multi-million-pound property.
Mrs Dick-Stock and her husband, Darrin, said they found hundreds of thousands of documents relating to the trust company locked in the manor’s indoor squash court in 2012.
These are now the subject of a joint investigation by the Miami Herald and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP ) – a global network of investigative journalists, and were featured on the front page of the national newspaper against a photo backdrop of Gorey Harbour and Mont Orgueil Castle in the lead-up to Maxwell’s sentencing for sex trafficking.
The 60-year-old will be sentenced later this month after she was convicted on five out of six trafficking charges in a US court in December.
In an article headlined ‘Island of Jersey keeps sordid secrets of the rich and powerful’, the authors Leah McGrath Goodman, Ben Wieder and Kevin G Hall wrote: ‘Offshore companies registered in Jersey have been linked to the US savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, Middle East arms deals, major drug seizures and busts, and the Goldman Sachs deal that made Wall Street hedge funder John Paulson billions, but forced the bank to pay a half-billion-dollar settlement to the Securities and Exchange Commission over claims it misled investors.’
The articles claim the scope and source of the Maxwell family’s wealth has long been a mystery, but that the La Hougue documents offer ‘tantalising clues’, and add that Maxwell’s trial showed how she and Epstein – who died in US federal custody in August 2019, taking his secrets with him – used offshore companies ‘to build, disguise and conceal their wealth’.
Papers in the trove are said to disclose that La Hougue worked with Ghislaine’s older brothers, Ian and Kevin Maxwell, and allegedly contain evidence of ‘highly irregular trading activities in publicly listed US companies, secret stock deals and possible securities violations, while millions of dollars in payments moved through offshore companies to members of the Maxwell family’.
The Maxwell siblings’ father, Robert, once a media baron with holdings including Mirror Group Newspapers and Macmillan Publishers and a former UK Labour MP, died in mysterious circumstances in 1991. He was found drowned off the Canary Islands after going missing from his yacht, Lady Ghislaine.
After his death, the Maxwell brothers were accused of helping him raid his media holdings, including £460 million from the Mirror Group pension fund. They were acquitted following an eight-month trial in 1996, which cost UK prosecutors £25m.
Tanya Dick-Stock and her father have been in a bitter legal battle for years, as she believes the Canadian-born businessman raided her rightful trusts for millions. Mr Dick denies any wrongdoing and claims the entire family were the victims of fraudulent activities.
‘Dick originally founded La Hougue to manage his real estate assets, but the financial company’s services grew to include the fabrication and forgery of documents; the creation of dummy accounts; the concealment of clients’ identities; and a litany of techniques for hiding high-end clients’ money offshore,’ according to the Miami Herald articles.
The articles also claim that the States of Jersey Police once held the 333 boxes of documents, but took no action on anything detailed in the papers.
‘The Government of Jersey is aware of these media reports,’ a spokesperson said yesterday.
‘They contain allegations of criminal conduct, and it would not be appropriate to comment.’
When contacted by Miami Herald reporters, the Maxwell brothers said they could not recall unaided any details of La Hougue Trust.
