LONDON – “Here it is, June 10, 2019. It is our last photo together, here in London: the reunion of all the Maxwell brothers. Anne, Kevin, the twins Isabel and Christine, Philip, myself. And then Ghislaine. Who disappeared after that day “. Until his arrest in July 2020. Ghislaine Maxwell’s former London home on Kinnerton Street, where Prince Andrew was photographed with the 17-year-old on March 10, 2001 Virginia Roberts Giuffre who accuses him of rape, is a few hundred meters from the hotel where we meet Ian Maxwell, Ghislaine’s brother, the 60-year-old former English socialite in prison in New York and found guilty of sex trafficking in minors for the billionaire pedophile and his former partner Jeffrey Epstein. Sixty-five, former heir to the family’s failed publishing empire, now head of the think-tank Combating Jihadist Terrorism, Ian is the seventh of nine children of the controversial tycoon Robert Maxwell. He is convinced that Ghislaine is “innocent because he scapegoats Epstein and the US justice”, despite the recent sentence and numerous testimonies against her by victims of the American suicide in 2019. But, above all, Ian is an extraordinary witness to the fortunes and curses of the dramatic Maxwell dynasty, led by the mid-century “Murdoch”: the powerful Robert Maxwell, then at the head of a media empire including the Daily Mirror, born in Czechoslovakia in 1923 into an Orthodox Jewish family, survivor of the Holocaust and protagonist of an astonishing rise to the point of collapse: financial, for scam, and physical, off the Canary Islands. Where he drowned in 1991, sank from his yacht “Lady Ghislaine”, in circumstances still mysterious. According to some, Ghislaine, the entrepreneur’s youngest and “favorite” daughter, went from loving a “monster” like Robert Maxwell to another like Epstein. “A fallacious theory,” Ian quickly retorts. “And my father was not a monster as you say”.
The Prince of Shame
by Carlo Bonini (editorial coordination and text), Antonello Guerrera (from London) and Paolo Mastrolilli (from New York). With an article by Enrico Franceschini. Multimedia coordination by Laura Pertici. Gedi Visual production
But his mother Elizabeth, in the memoirs “Even the sun is bitter”, described him as “cruel, authoritarian, dictatorial, selfish, despot”.
“That’s true. But don’t forget that that book was published three years after my father’s crack. We were left with nothing. Nothing. Besides, Mom was the” soft power “in the family. Protestants and non-Jews “.
Although Robert Maxwell’s family had been exterminated by the Nazis.
“Yeah. He and Mom had nine children: nine like dad’s family members. Robert Maxwell wanted to recreate it like this, with us. But even my mother, a Huguenot, had generations killed by Catholics. My parents’ lives were marked by massacres. “.
But is it true that Robert Maxwell humiliated her, Ghislaine and the rest of the family?
“Sometimes it happened. But not always. He had a difficult life. He made himself.”
So what was your father like?
“Like fighting a bull. Indeed, like the sun: if you approached you burned, if you moved away you froze. A compromise was always needed. One morning, I was 18, he went into my room and ordered:” You go to Japan!”.
Because?
“He sorted his children across continents, to” cover “every area of the world. Or when he” sold me “to a foundation of Prince Charles, to work for free. Once he even fired me.”
How come?
“I couldn’t go and pick him up at the airport. It was over for him. After three months of silence he calls me back. He hired me back, at 50% of my pay.”
Do you think your father was killed?
“At the news, I felt pain and release at the same time. I think it was an accident. Ghislaine, on the other hand, is convinced that he was killed. And she thinks the same of Epstein.”
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Ghislaine was Papa Robert’s favorite. Was she jealous of it?
“She was not the favorite, but the most spoiled. After our sister Karine died from leukemia at the age of three in 1957 and that of our brother Michael in 1967 after seven years in a coma, my parents neglected Ghislaine. Then she, at 3. years, she screamed: “Mom, I exist!”. From that day on she was treated with special attention. But I don’t think it was my father’s favorite, who was also very jealous of Ghislaine: he made all the boyfriends run away “.
And the yacht called Lady Ghislaine?
“Dad wanted to dedicate it to Mom, but there was already a boat named” Lady Elizabeth “”.
Ghislaine was found guilty of very serious crimes. Did he ever talk to her about it?
“Ghislaine is innocent. She was used by Epstein. After the latter’s first conviction in 2009, they were no longer together.”
But there are numerous testimonies from girls against her.
“The memories are inaccurate after a long time. The witnesses were questioned improperly. In addition, several members of the jury pleaded false in the selection for this trial. We will ask for an appeal.”
Do you feel with Ghislaine?
“Through the lawyers. We don’t talk on the phone so as not to aggravate her position. She fears” being killed like Epstein, “she says. We met in court now that we brothers have gone to New York to support her: I saw her for the first time in over two years. She was worn out, they treated her badly in the cell. “
And what did you say to each other?
“She says to me:” How strange to be here, Ian! “Then some chat about my son, our family. We spoke in French, so as not to make the guards understand anything. But remember: we Maxwells are fighters. everything to get Ghislaine out of that cell. “