The daughter of one extremely rich man and the longtime confidante of another, Ghislaine Maxwell has always enjoyed proximity to wealth. But how much money she has herself is a mystery.
Maxwell, who has pleaded not guilty to charges she recruited girls for sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein, is spending the next year in jail in part because her "opaque” finances led the judge overseeing the case to conclude she was an extraordinary flight risk.
"At a basic level, the defense argument is that she cannot remember off the top of her head just how many millions of dollars she has,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe said at Maxwell’s bail hearing Tuesday. The prosecutor said Maxwell’s claims to have less than $1 million in the bank and no monthly income was "implausible.”