A mannequin scout who was doubtless to be questioned by prosecutors in France for his connections to Jeffrey Epstein was discovered useless this week in a home close to Paris, French officers mentioned on Wednesday.
The man, Daniel Siad, was in common contact with Mr. Epstein a couple of decade in the past, in accordance to recordsdata launched in January by the Justice Department. Their texts counsel that Mr. Siad repeatedly tried to join Mr. Epstein, a disgraced financier accused of operating a sex-trafficking ring, with folks Mr. Siad described as feminine fashions, together with one who he mentioned was 15 and others who have been beneath 18.
Mr. Siad later acknowledged his work for Mr. Epstein however denied wrongdoing. His physique was discovered on Monday in a home in Colombes, a northwestern suburb of Paris, in accordance to the native prosecutor’s workplace. The authorities are nonetheless assessing how Mr. Siad died, the prosecutors mentioned.
He was named in February by Laure Beccuau, the chief Paris prosecutor, as “one of the people who could be questioned” as a part of a pair of broader inquiries into people connected to Mr. Epstein that opened that month.
In an announcement on Wednesday, Ms. Beccuau mentioned investigators had recognized or been contacted by 24 ladies who have been victims or witnesses of incidents “likely committed by Daniel Siad or others implicated,” and had spoken with 16 of them. The investigation had not “yet yielded any evidence justifying his immediate arrest,” Ms. Beccuau added.
In a broadcast interview in May, Mr. Siad denied the accusations towards him and mentioned he was ready for justice to take its course.
In that interview, Mr. Siad mentioned he had labored as a mannequin scout for 30 years and was launched to Mr. Epstein in the early 2000s.
Over 15 years, Mr. Siad linked Mr. Epstein to a couple of dozen fashions, Mr. Siad mentioned. None of them ever gave him “negative feedback” about Mr. Epstein, he mentioned. “My relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was strictly professional,” he added.
Mr. Siad’s lawyer, Ménya Arab-Tigrine, mentioned on Wednesday that her consumer had “consistently proclaimed his innocence.”
Separately, prosecutors mentioned this yr that that they had additionally obtained a grievance from a Swedish girl accusing Mr. Siad of committing “sexual acts that she describes as rape” in 1990 in France.
The girl, a former mannequin named Ebba P. Karlsson, wrote on a web site that she co-founded to publicize testimonies from abuse survivors that Mr. Siad “raped me in a pool house behind a villa on the French Riviera.” In the May interview Mr. Siad mentioned, “I never raped a woman in my life.”
Despite Mr. Siad’s dying, the investigation will proceed “to identify all individuals who may be implicated,” Ms. Beccuau mentioned in the assertion on Wednesday.
Mr. Siad is the second individual linked to Mr. Epstein who has been discovered useless in France. In 2022, Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent and Epstein affiliate who had been charged with the rape of minors, was found dead in his jail cell.
