Jeffrey Epstein's London
His proposed Mayfair "playroom", the mansions he considered buying, plus his curious plan for a meeting between Woody Allen and a mystery man known as "PA".
On a discreet side alley in St James’s, just across Green Park from Buckingham Palace, sits the boutique five-star Dukes hotel. It markets itself as a quintessentially British place to stay while in London, complete with its own cigar merchant.
It’s also the hotel Jeffrey Epstein considered buying following encouragement by one of Prince Andrew’s associates, according to previously unreported messages seen by London Centric.
The proposal was that Epstein could take over the building and turn its penthouse suite into his “London playroom” where the convicted sex offender could enjoy “lots of P”.
“Lots of P”, which appears regularly in emails involving Epstein, appears to be a reference to “pussy”.
A hotel off Pall Mall
Jeffrey Epstein’s emails have consumed global politics over the last week, following the release by the US authorities of millions of files connected to the incredibly well-connected sex offender. While the global political and business ramifications are enormous, this scandal also reinforces once again the role that London plays in the lives of the almost untouchable super-rich.
London Centric has been digging into the emails to uncover how money flows around the capital, and how it buys discretion for a certain type of person – usually in a very small corner of the city between Regent Street and Hyde Park.
Epstein was a creature of New York but he regularly visited London, and records show his familiarity with the city – or at least the small strip of it between Mayfair and Knightsbridge, where houses cost tens millions of pounds and young female models can be easily booked to accompany old men to dinner.
Some of the London addresses in the Epstein files are well known: The emails show him regularly inviting contacts to meet at Ghislaine Maxwell’s mews house on Kinnerton Street in Knightsbridge, where an infamous photo involving Virginia Giuffre and Prince Andrew was alleged to have been taken. There are also invites from the then-Duke of York to Epstein, suggesting he visit Buckingham Palace for dinner.
Yet many of the other London locations in this article, such as Dukes hotel, have not previously been associated with Epstein. What’s clear throughout the huge cache of emails is that the sex offender took an active interest in the British capital and the activities and private lives of its super-rich.
“Your London playroom”
When Epstein was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a child in 2009, he was sentenced to 18 months in a minimum-security jail. After his release he emailed the government minister Peter Mandelson, joking about celebrating his release from prison with two strippers called Grace and Modesty.
“From now on, grace and modesty sd [should] be discovered in London,” Mandelson replied.
Epstein seems to have taken the invite to spend more time in London to heart. The following year he was on an email chain involving Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, a Dubai-based businessman who oversaw the construction of the giant DP World London Gateway port in Essex – and also owned the Dukes hotel.
The hotel’s parent company was struggling due to the terms of the loan used to complete the purchase of the hotel. By 2010 the Dubai businessman was emailing Epstein asking for advice in the hope of finding a bank that would refinance the hotel’s loans at a lower interest rate. Bin Sulayem asked for introductions to financier Jes Staley, then a senior JPMorgan executive who later became CEO of Barclays.
Around this time Epstein began to take a personal interest in the London hotel – seemingly as a potential buyer.
One correspondent, whose name was redacted by the US authorities, emailed Epstein with a proposal to buy Dukes. Epstein could then “make the top your london residence, have room for lots of P, and have full hotel services”
Epstein began investigating the purchase further, asking financial advisers to work out the real value of Dukes and how much would have to be spent on refurbishing it.
In a sign of how seriously the idea was taken, the hotel’s owners – who still own it today – shared confidential internal financial projections with the convicted child sex trafficker.
The due diligence on the potential London hotel deal included conversations with David Stern, a businessman who later became a director of Prince Andrew’s Pitch@Palace entrepreneurs initiative.
Stern, who was already ingratiating himself with Prince Andrew thanks to Epstein, seemed keen on the idea of buying the hotel in order to install a “playroom” for Epstein.
He emailed the convicted sex offender:
“I was thinking of looking at actual rooms at the Duke tomorrow before i fly, to check how small they are.
Your London playroom on top floor - after some renovation - is still something i like.
Should I look at it: yes or waste of time?”
Epstein quickly told Stern to press ahead and investigate Dukes further:
“Look.”
That same afternoon Epstein emailed hotel magnate Giuseppe Cipriani to ask whether he wanted to be involved in buying Dukes, asking “any interest , in doing this with me”.
The reply from Cipriani was negative – but over the coming months Epstein seems to have maintained an interest in the hotel’s fortunes and was kept abreast of its financial situation.
“Please stop by the hotel when you are in London next,” wrote Bin Sulayem to Epstein in a later email, again asking for financial help with Dukes.
Eventually the hotel’s performance improved and no deal took place. Dukes hotel did not respond to a request for comment on why its owner had been involved in financial negotiations with a man who was already at that point a convicted sex offender.
Epstein’s proposed London meeting between Woody Allen and “PA”
Even as he became increasingly notorious after his conviction Epstein was regularly flying to the UK and arranging meetings in London. Emails reported by the BBC suggest that Epstein set up a London dinner between Prince Andrew and a 26-year-old Russian woman in August 2010.
Epstein also seems to have acted as an informal representative for Woody Allen, helping to plan a trip to Europe for the film director in August 2014.
Ahead of this visit, Epstein sent an email to David Stern, the associate of Prince Andrew.
In a previously unreported message seen by London Centric, Epstein asked Stern whether someone called “PA” would like to meet Woody Allen in London. Epstein wanted to know if this was “possible or advisable”.
Stern’s response was that “I will talk to him and see no reason why not. We make it a private meeting. When?”
There’s no evidence in the emails that the London meeting between the two men took place. But who was PA?
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