Paris, Not Little St. James: Declassified Epstein Files Reveal $3 Million Avenue Foch Mansion as Key European Hub
PARIS / NEW YORK – 10 March 2026
While Jeffrey Epstein’s private Caribbean island has dominated headlines for years, newly unsealed documents and property records point to a far less publicised but equally significant European base: a luxurious $3 million mansion on Paris’s prestigious Avenue Foch that served as a discreet operational centre for his network from the late 1990s until at least 2014.
The seven-bedroom residence, purchased in 1998 through an offshore company linked to Epstein’s financial advisor, was extensively renovated in the early 2000s. Interior descriptions in FBI interviews with former staff and one cooperating witness describe blood-red walls in several rooms, large-scale nude portraits (including some of young women later identified as victims), hidden massage tables with restraints, and a soundproofed “relaxation suite” on the lower level. Flight and travel records show Epstein visited Paris more than 170 times between 1995 and 2018, often staying at the Avenue Foch property for weeks at a time.
The mansion’s role emerges clearly in depositions and email correspondence released this month under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Several victims state they were brought to the Paris house for “modelling sessions” or “private dinners” that escalated into abuse. One witness described Maxwell giving tours of the property and explaining that “Jeffrey likes everything red because it’s powerful.” Another recalled being instructed to wait in the massage room while Epstein met with French business contacts upstairs.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s long-standing French family connections—her father Robert Maxwell owned property in Paris and had deep ties to French political and media circles—appear to have facilitated the Paris foothold. Property records show the Avenue Foch mansion was held through a Luxembourg trust until 2015, when ownership was quietly transferred to a French shell company. French tax authorities have confirmed the property was sold in 2022 for €8.7 million; the current owner has not been publicly identified.
French judicial authorities opened a preliminary inquiry into Epstein’s activities in France in 2019 but closed it in 2023 citing insufficient evidence of crimes committed on French soil. No charges have been brought against any French nationals or entities linked to the Paris property. A spokesperson for the Paris prosecutor’s office said last week that “all relevant material from U.S. authorities has been reviewed” and declined to comment on the newly public descriptions of the interior.
The revelations have prompted fresh calls for a reopened French investigation. Lawyers representing several Epstein survivors in France filed a formal request yesterday asking the Paris prosecutor to re-examine witness statements, property records, and any police reports from the Avenue Foch address between 2000 and 2015.
Buckingham Palace, the Élysée Palace and several French business figures previously linked to Epstein have made no comment on the latest disclosures. The French government has historically maintained that Epstein’s Paris activities were “not under French jurisdiction” because most documented abuse occurred outside the country.
As additional Epstein files continue to be declassified, the Avenue Foch mansion is emerging as a critical missing piece: a European command centre where the same patterns of recruitment, abuse and elite networking that defined Little St. James played out behind elegant Haussmannian façades. The question now is no longer whether Paris was part of the network—it is how much of the network’s European operations remain deliberately undocumented or unprosecuted.
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