Editor's note: On August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein died in an apparent jailhouse suicide. For more information, see The Daily Beast's reporting here.
Newly unsealed court documents in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal contain testimony from an ex-employee of New York City power couple Glenn Dubin and Eva Andersson-Dubin about a “distraught” Swedish teen’s claim that she was pressured to have sex on the pedophile financier’s private island.
Rinaldo Rizzo, a former house manager for the Dubins, was in tears as he described his 2005 encounter with the 15-year-old girl in his employers’ kitchen, according to excerpts of a 2016 deposition made public for the first time on Friday.
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The butler said that as the girl sat on a stool at a long counter—where she was brought by Andersson-Dubin, an ex-girlfriend of Epstein—she reminded him of other girls he had seen at Epstein’s home.
He said she was “distraught and shaking... literally quivering” as she spoke about her dealings with Epstein’s alleged madam, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, and his personal assistant, Sarah Kellen, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
“She sat down and sat in the stool exactly the way the girls that I mentioned to you sat at Jeffrey’s house, with no expression and with their head down,” Rizzo testified.
Rizzo said that after Andersson-Dubin left the kitchen, he introduced himself and his wife to the teen.
“She doesn’t really respond,” Rizzo recalled. “Nothing verbal, no cues, her head is still down. I asked her if she would like some water, tissue, anything, and she basically doesn’t respond.”
Rizzo said he decided to try making small talk.
“Oh, by the way, do you work for Jeffrey?” he recalled asking.
“Yes,” the teen said, by his account.
“What do you do?” he asked.
“I’m Jeffrey’s executive assistant, personal assistant,” she replied.
She looked much too young for that, and Rizzo said he asked her how she got the job, how old she was.
“And she says to me, point blank, ‘I’m 15,’” Rizzo testified. “And I said to her. ‘You’re 15 years old and you have a position like that?’ At that point she just breaks down hysterical, and I feel like I just said something wrong, and she will not stop crying.”
According to the deposition, Rizzo and his wife tried to console her with words and renewed offers of water and tissue. Nothing worked.
“And then in a state of shock, she just lets it rip, and what she told me was unbelievable,” Rizzo testified. “She proceeded to tell my wife and I… 'I was on the island and there was Ghislaine, and there was Sarah,’ and she said, ‘They asked me for sex. I said no.’”
Rizzo later clarified, “She didn’t specify who asked for sex. She said they asked for sex.”
Rizzo testified that when she refused to have sex, Kellen took her phone and passport and gave them to Maxwell.
“And at that point, she said she was threatened,” Rizzo testified. “And I said, ‘Threatened?’ She says, ‘Yes. I was threatened by Ghislaine, not to discuss this.’”
Rizzo asked the teen if she had contacted her parents.
“She says, ‘I’m not supposed to talk about this,’” he recalled.
The teen reported that Epstein had also threatened her to keep quiet about what had gone on.
“The word she used was sex,” Rizzo testified, adding that it was clear the girl was in fear
“She was shaking uncontrollably,” he testified.
Rizzo said the girl stopped answering questions when she heard someone approaching the kitchen.
“Eva comes in and tells her that she will be working for Eva in the city,” Rizzo testified. “As a nanny.”
He said he saw the girl approximately a month later aboard a flight with the Dubin family to Sweden. She was dropped off at a Swedish airport.
Ghislaine Maxwell and Eva Andersson-Dubin at a 2005 Halloween gala.
Patrick McMullan/GettyEpstein was arrested last month and charged with sex-trafficking, accusing of recruiting dozens of underage girls to his homes in New York and Miami.
Rizzo’s testimony was submitted in a different case, a defamation suit brought by Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Maxwell. The case, which was settled in 2017 on confidential terms, contained a trove of documents the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered unsealed.
Those documents also revealed that Giuffre—who claims she was Epstein and Maxwell’s “sex slave”—had accused Glenn Dubin of being part of Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring, which he denies.
“Glenn and Eva Dubin are outraged by the allegations in the unsealed court records, which are demonstrably false and defamatory. The Dubins have flight records and other evidence that definitively disprove that any such events occurred,” a spokesperson for the Dubin family told The Daily Beast on Friday.
Andersson-Dubin, a former Miss Sweden and Ford model—now a philanthropist and doctor—told The New York Times right after Epstein's arrest that she was shocked by the sex trafficking allegations against her ex-boyfriend and they were “completely counter to the person she is familiar with.”
In a separate statement, the billionaire couple declared, “The Dubins are horrified by the new allegations against Jeffrey Epstein... Had they been aware of the vile and unspeakable conduct described in these new allegations, they would have cut off all ties and certainly never have allowed their children to be in his presence.”
Eva and Glenn Dubin have been married since 1994. He is a founder of Highbridge Capital and also launched the philanthropic Robin Hood Foundation and the Dubin Breast Cancer Center at Mt. Sinai after Eva's own experience with breast cancer. They have also signed Bill Gates and Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge, to give away a portion of their wealth in their lifetime—which is estimated by Forbes to be around $2 billion.
But before Glenn Dubin, Eva had another wealthy beau—Epstein. One dancer told The Daily Beast that she flew to Palm Beach in 1983 to teach Epstein and his guests ballet barre lessons and stretching. Two of those guests were Andersson-Dubin and another Swedish model with the Ford agency, she said.
According to the Times, Andersson-Dubin was in medical school when she met Epstein, and she remained close to him after she married Glenn Dubin—who also counted himself as a friend of Epstein. Bloomberg reported that Epstein had invested in Dubin’s hedge fund.
Jeffrey Epstein
Andersson-Dubin helped to reintroduce Epstein into Manhattan’s society circles after he was released from a Palm Beach jail, followed by house arrest, in 2010. “If Mr. Epstein had Dr. Andersson-Dubin’s friendship, it suggested to others that perhaps he should be given the benefit of the doubt,” a Times article pointed out.
“She's a very loyal friend and didn't abandon him after 2008, but the frequency of their contact was less,” the spokeswoman said.
As Business Insider revealed, the Dubins invited Epstein to their Palm Beach home for Thanksgiving dinner in 2009. In an email to Epstein’s probation officer, Eva wrote, “I am 100% comfortable with Jeffrey Epstein around my children,” while acknowledging Epstein was convicted of procuring a minor for prostitution. At the time, the couple’s three kids were underage, Business Insider reported.
Epstein appears to have funded Andersson-Dubin’s projects—particularly her passion for women’s health.
In July 2012, Epstein issued a press release touting his charity’s supposed donation to the Dubin Breast Center. “The Dubin Breast Center at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, a provider of 3D mammography to test for breast cancer, announced it has received additional support from science philanthropist, Jeffrey Epstein and his foundation, The Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation,” the bulletin read.
The press release included a quote only from Epstein: “Early diagnosis is clearly critical to survival. We are very excited that 3D mammography is playing a role in stopping breast cancer from developing.”
According to Business Insider, Andersson-Dubin established a nonprofit in her daughter’s name, the Celina Dubin United Fund, in order to funnel Epstein’s money to the Dubin Breast Center. The article stated that Epstein “understood that a public donation from a registered sex offender might not be welcome.”
Celina Dubin United Fund’s tax-exempt application—reviewed by The Daily Beast—shows that the group's accountant, George V. Delson, is the same bookkeeper for Epstein’s former nonprofits, including the C.O.U.Q. Foundation and Epstein Interests.
The Celina Dubin United Fund was incorporated in October 2009, and listed Andersson-Dubin as the sole trustee, tax records show. A registration statement identified Brenda Ames, the CFO at Glenn Dubin's Highbridge Capital Management, as the group’s treasurer.
The nonprofit’s 2012 schedule of contributors, filed with the IRS, showed a single donor—the J. Epstein Virgin Islands Foundation, Inc., which donated $25,000. And a 2013 tax return listed a sole expense of $22,413, back to the J. Epstein Virgin Islands Foundation, Inc.
A statement attached to the 2013 tax form shows the Celina Dubin group terminated on Feb. 28, 2013, and that $22,413 would be returned to Epstein since it had not been used, per the agreement between Andersson-Dubin’s and Epstein’s charities. The March 2012 agreement was signed on Epstein’s behalf by his longtime attorney, Darren Indyke.
In March of this year, The Daily Beast exposed Epstein’s secret charity, Gratitude America Ltd., which was quietly created in 2012.
In 2016, Gratitude America Ltd. shelled out $50,000 to Harvard’s historic theater troupe, the Hasty Pudding Institute of 1770. After The Daily Beast’s story, the institute removed Epstein’s name from a roster of top donors on its website.
The Hasty Pudding website also lists “Eva & Glenn Dubin” as donors who’ve contributed $25,000 or more to the group. According to her LinkedIn page and photos of Hasty Pudding events, Celina Dubin was a member of the club.
Gratitude America also donated $10,000 to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, where Celina Dubin is a medical student.
Aside from the Dubins’ connections to Epstein through philanthropy, Glenn had encouraged Epstein to invest $80 million in a hedge fund by onetime wunderkind Daniel Zwirn from 2002 to 2005, according to reports in New York and Business Insider.
Zwirn was a former senior portfolio manager at Dubin’s Highbridge Capital. Epstein also invested in Highbridge in 1998, New York reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.
In 2006, Epstein had tried to withdraw his investment, which blossomed to $140 million, after he learned of accounting irregularities, including $3 million spent on a Gulfstream jet, which Zwirn claimed was purchased for him by the fund’s CFO without his knowledge.
Zwirn’s fund collapsed in 2008 after the Securities and Exchange Commission launched an investigation into its accounting. “One of the early investors that I introduced to Zwirn was Jeffrey Epstein,” Dubin stated in a 2010 affidavit, as part of a later lawsuit over Epstein’s lost millions. “Epstein was both a personal friend of mine and a long-time investor in [Highbridge].”
Meanwhile, Glenn Dubin’s name was mentioned in two depositions relating to Epstein’s abuse of underage girls, as part of the Jane Doe lawsuit against the government.
During a 2010 deposition of Epstein’s alleged co-conspirator and “sex slave” Nadia Marcinkova, victims’ lawyer Brad Edwards asked various questions, including “Do you know Bill Clinton?” and “Do you know what Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship is with Alan Dershowitz?”
Marcinkova pleaded the Fifth in response to each query.
“Do you know Glenn Dubin?” he asked the young woman.
She pleaded the Fifth.
Similarly, in a 2010 deposition of another alleged co-conspirator Adriana Ross (also known as Adriana Mucinska), lawyers asked:
“Can you tell us any of the other folks that Jeffrey Epstein would supply underage minor girls to?”
“I refuse to answer,” Ross said.
“Do you know a man by the name of Glenn Dubin?”
“I refuse to answer.”
“His wife at some point in time was associated with Jeffrey Epstein; is that correct?”
“I refuse to answer.”
“And her name’s Eva Dubin; is that right?”
“I refuse to answer.”
“Either way, isn’t it true that Jeffrey Epstein then started supplying underage females to Glenn Dubin?”
She refused to answer.
