By Ivor Bennett, Moscow correspondent
What has Vladimir Putin got to do with Jeffrey Epstein?
The Russian president’s name appears more than 1,000 times in the latest files.
His inclusion doesn’t imply any wrongdoing, and there’s no evidence the two ever met, but boy, it sounds like Epstein wanted to.
The emails appear to reveal repeated attempts by the convicted sex offender to court the Kremlin leader.
And there’s even an audio file, in which Epstein can be heard coaching someone on how to approach Putin.
Listen here…
“I would send a note to Putin, saying ‘I’m going to leave government on March 14th. I’m going to be in Scandinavia, or I plan to be in western, northern Europe. We should have dinner’. That’s it, no more. It has to be very short,” he says in the recording.
The first substantive mention of Vladimir Putin in the latest files, unearthed by Sky’s Data and Forensics team, is from September 2011.
An unnamed contact refers to a meeting Epstein said he’d arranged with Putin later that month, while Putin was Russia’s prime minister. There’s no evidence it took place and there are no other details.
From 2013 onwards, by which time Putin had returned to the presidency, the emails show Epstein made several bids to meet him through the former Norwegian PM Thorbjorn Jagland.
From Epstein with love
In May that year, Epstein emailed Jagland, who was then serving as secretary-general of the Council of Europe, saying: “I know you are going to meet putin [sic] on the 20th, He is desperate to engage western investment in his country…I have his solution.”
He adds: “I recoginize [sic] that there are human rights issues that are at the forefront of your trip howver [sic], if it is helpful to you, I would be happy to meet with him sometime in june [sic] and explain the solution to his top prioirty [sic], I think this would be good for your goals.”
But it appears it never happened. After pestering Jagland to follow up within Putin’s team, Epstein complains that he’s heard nothing back.
In January 2014, Jagland told Epstein he was going to meet Putin in Sochi. “Why don’t you come?” he asks. We don’t know what happened next.
But in July that year, Epstein still sounds desperate to meet the Russian president. In an email, a contact tells him: “I wasn’t able to convince Reid to change his schedule to go meet Putin with you.”
“Bad idea now after plane crash,” Epstein replies – a reference to Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 which was shot down over eastern Ukraine three days prior, killing all 298 people on board.
But it seems it didn’t put Epstein off for long.
A year later, in July 2015, he tells Jagland: “I still would like to meet putin [sic] and talk economy, i would really appreciate your assistance.”
There are more attempts in 2016, 2017 and finally in June 2018 – just one line in an email to Jagland once again: “Would love to meet with putin [sic].”
It’s certainly no smoking gun – it appears to be more a case of unrequited love.
Silence in Moscow
When asked about files, the Kremlin said today that it did not receive any offers from Epstein about a meeting with Vladimir Putin.
Still, it’s interesting to see how the Russian media is covering this story because, well, they’re not.
There’s very little mention of it at all, and where there is, the focus is elsewhere – on Bill Clinton, Peter Mandelson and the crown princess of Norway.
So even though there’s no evidence or implication that he ever actually met with Epstein, Vladimir Putin’s appearance in the files is still not something Moscow wants to highlight.
