Modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who knew Jeffrey Epstein, detained -French prosecutor

In July, former Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested in the United States on charges she helped enable the financier's sexual abuses. Maxwell is jailed pending a trial scheduled for July 2021 after she pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and groom underage girls for sex in the mid-1990s.

Jean-Luc Brunel, a longtime French modeling agent who knew the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, has been taken into custody by French authorities, the Paris prosecutor's office said on Thursday.

Brunel, 74, was detained on Wednesday as part of a probe opened last year into allegations of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment, the office said. He was arrested at Charles de Gaulle Airport before boarding a plane scheduled to fly to the Ivory Coast, according to several French media reports.

A lawyer for Brunel and her law firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside business hours. Brunel has denied any wrongdoing in connection with his association with Epstein.

The financier killed himself in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He had a decade earlier avoided federal prosecution through a separate agreement with prosecutors in Florida.

Brunel had sued Epstein in 2015, claiming that the financier's legal troubles had unfairly embroiled him and damaged his modeling agency’s reputation https://www.reuters.com/article/us-epstein-lawsuit-brunel-idUSKBN0MM2H420150326. In July, former Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested in the United States on charges she helped enable the financier's sexual abuses.

Maxwell is jailed pending a trial scheduled for July 2021 after she pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and groom underage girls for sex in the mid-1990s. She has proposed a $28.5 million bail package, which U.S. prosecutors are expected to oppose.