Jeffrey Epstein rented four flats in one of London's wealthiest boroughs and used them to house women, including at least one who was transported there just 16 days before his July 2019 arrest, all while British police sat on a trafficking allegation that had landed on their desks years earlier.
The BBC, after reviewing millions of pages from the so-called "Epstein Files" released by the U.S. Department of Justice, reported that British police "missed opportunities" to investigate Epstein's activities on UK soil. The properties sat in Kensington and Chelsea, including a flat at Nell Gwynn House on Sloane Avenue and another on Draycott Place, and the paper trail behind them runs deep.
What emerges is a picture of institutional passivity so thorough it borders on complicity. Virginia Giuffre told the Metropolitan Police in 2015 that Epstein had trafficked her. The Met interviewed her three times across 2015 and 2016, liaised with U.S. authorities, and obtained advice from the Crown Prosecution Service. Then it closed the door. No investigation was commenced. The Met said it had followed "reasonable lines of enquiry" and that "other international authorities were best placed to progress" the allegations.
Epstein, meanwhile, carried on.
Between 2011 and 2019, Epstein purchased more than 50 Eurostar tickets, the BBC found. At least 33 of those 53 tickets were bought after Giuffre reported her abuse to the Met in 2015. Women were regularly moved between London and Paris on those trains. The operation did not slow down because a trafficking victim walked into a police station. It accelerated.
The financial footprint was not subtle. One woman had a card on Epstein's bank account with a $2,000 monthly allowance, roughly £1,477. Another flat, rented between 2018 and 2019, carried a 10,000-page credit card bill. A document published in the Epstein Files showed British authorities knew as early as 2015 that Epstein had rented at least one of the four flats.
In 2019, Epstein was messaging a young Russian woman staying in a London flat he was paying for. Evidence released by the DOJ shows he sent her a photo on Skype that appears to have been a picture of himself. He told one woman he would loan her rent money and would "gift" it if she worked for him for six months. When she apparently resisted, he called her a "brat who has yet to accept responsibility."
Six women have since come forward in connection with the BBC's reporting. None of them, the Met says, had previously made allegations of criminal conduct in London to police.
Hyland told the BBC:
"People are outraged that somebody came forward and said, 'I was trafficked by this man', and yet he was just allowed to carry on. Who in the police made that decision?"
That question hangs over the entire affair. Giuffre's allegation was not vague. It was specific enough that the Met conducted multiple interviews and sought CPS guidance. Yet the result was inaction, and Epstein's London operation continued for four more years.
Hyland also pointed to basic investigative tools that were never deployed. Met officers could have monitored credit cards and IP addresses, he said. The infrastructure existed. The will did not. The Epstein case has drawn renewed scrutiny in the wake of the DOJ's release of files, and Melania Trump recently addressed the Epstein file references in a rare White House speech, underscoring the degree to which the case has re-entered public consciousness on both sides of the Atlantic.
Human rights lawyer Tessa Gregory called the Met's failure to investigate "staggering" and said the force has a legal obligation to review these alleged crimes. That word, obligation, matters. This is not a question of discretion or resource allocation. When a trafficking victim names her trafficker and that trafficker continues operating in your jurisdiction, the law expects a response.
The Metropolitan Police was not the only British agency with knowledge of Epstein's activities. The National Crime Agency was aware of accusations surrounding Epstein and took at least some steps, but the trail raises more questions than it answers.
In early 2020, a second victim alleged that Epstein had abused her in the UK. That same year, the NCA told the FBI in a memo about sexual abuse allegations against Clare Hazell, the Countess of Iveagh, a socialite alleged to have flown on Epstein's private jet more than 30 times. The NCA also shared intelligence with the FBI surrounding Epstein's financial transactions, including bank payments for rent on a flat in Chelsea.
So British authorities were sharing intelligence with the FBI about Epstein's London finances, while no domestic investigation was underway. The information flowed outward. Accountability stayed frozen.
The NCA's public statement was a masterclass in bureaucratic caution. A spokesperson said the agency "works with national and international partners in the exchange of information and in support of investigations" but added that it does "not routinely confirm or deny the existence of investigations, support given to investigations or comment on the exchange of information with partner agencies." Regarding the Epstein Files, the spokesperson noted that "a number of police forces are currently assessing allegations that have emerged following their publication" and that the NCA is "supporting policing through the NPCC's national coordination group, to enable a full and independent assessment of the information released."
The institutional instinct, even now, is to assess rather than act. The pattern of security failures in Western capitals is not limited to London. In Washington, D.C., authorities have confronted their own lapses, from reported gunfire near Lafayette Park to broader concerns about whether the agencies tasked with protecting the public are up to the job.
The Metropolitan Police issued a lengthy statement in response to the BBC's reporting. It acknowledged awareness of "reporting regarding properties in London linked to Jeffrey Epstein and allegations that women living in them were victims of sexual abuse." But it stressed that no allegations of criminal conduct in London had been made to police by the six women referenced in the coverage.
The Met said specialist officers "are ready to speak to them should they wish to come forward" and asked the BBC to help communicate that message to the women. Regarding Giuffre, the Met reiterated that no allegation of criminal conduct was made "against any UK-based individual" during her interviews, and therefore no investigation was commenced.
Read that carefully. The Met's defense rests on a narrow jurisdictional point: Giuffre did not name a UK-based individual. But Epstein himself was renting property and moving women through London. The question was never solely about UK-based suspects. It was about a known sex trafficker operating on British soil.
The Met also said it is now "fully engaged" in the National Police Chiefs' Council taskforce established after the DOJ's release of the files and is conducting an "assessment of information which indicates that London airports may have been used as transit points in the facilitation of sexual exploitation and human trafficking." The disorder that plagues institutions charged with public safety is not unique to any one country. Stateside, even former Biden aides have acknowledged the deterioration of order in major cities.
Hyland raised the question that matters most going forward. Epstein is dead. But the infrastructure he built did not run itself. As the former detective told the BBC:
"Epstein's dead. But it's clear that he wasn't acting alone. Who else was involved and what offences could they have committed? And of course, importantly, is this still going on with others?"
The Epstein Files have ripped open a case that powerful people on multiple continents hoped would stay buried. Giuffre had made allegations against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who has always denied wrongdoing. Clare Hazell's name surfaced in an NCA-to-FBI memo. The web of connections stretches across borders, social circles, and years.
The Met says it has not received "any subsequent complaints, allegations, or reports from the individuals referenced in the BBC story, nor from any other parties, relating to offences alleged to have taken place in London." It promises that "should new information or allegations be reported to us, they would be carefully assessed in line with our established procedures and UK law."
That is the sound of an institution waiting to be forced into action rather than seeking it. In a world where security barricades are breached and public trust in protective institutions erodes by the day, the posture of passive readiness is no longer good enough.
The facts are not ambiguous. A convicted sex offender rented four London flats. Women lived in them. Eurostar tickets moved them between countries. Credit card bills ran to thousands of pages. A trafficking victim told police what was happening. And the machine kept running for four more years.
When institutions treat accountability as someone else's job, the people who pay the price are never the ones in the corner offices. They're the women in those flats.
