Daniel Siad's telephone was being intercepted by French investigators when he was found dead at his home in Colombes on 20 July 2026, according to Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, and in the five months since the investigation opened nobody had put a single question to him. Two claims served on the French state since then ask the Paris judicial tribunal to call that gross fault and to make the state pay for it.

Ebba Karlsson, a Swedish former model who accuses Siad of raping her near Cannes in 1990, had her claim served on 21 August 2026 and is asking for 50,000 euros. William Bourdon and Colomba Grossi, the lawyers acting for her, built it on the absence of any police custody and any interview of the man she named.

"Despite everything, it was not considered necessary to question Daniel Siad and he died on 20 July without ever having been interviewed by the police," Grossi said.
"There was the opportunity to hear him, but nothing was done for months," Karlsson said. "We are asking ourselves why he was not arrested."

Innocence en danger, the child protection association founded by Homayra Sellier, had its claim served three weeks earlier, on 31 July, and is asking for 15,000 euros. Jean Sannier, acting for the association, pleads defective functioning of the public justice service and denial of justice, and puts the grievance at seven years rather than five months. The association said its action carries "the anger of all the victims in this terrible case." AFP reported both claims on 26 August and France 24 carried the wire the same day. First hearings in each case are listed for 2027.

Beccuau's 22 July statement

Beccuau had already given the prosecution's answer, five weeks before either claim reached the press, in a statement issued on 22 July as Siad's death was made public.

"Daniel Siad was the subject of special investigative techniques and in particular telephone intercepts, without those having to date produced material justifying that he be arrested immediately,"

she said. Her office has said nothing publicly about either claim since they were served, and neither has the ministry of justice.

Beccuau opened the investigation Siad fell under on 18 February 2026, on charges of human trafficking in an organised gang and criminal conspiracy, alongside a second one into money laundering, probity offences and tax fraud. In her 22 July statement she said 24 women had come forward or been identified since the US disclosures began in December 2025, that 16 had been heard since 19 March, that one more was being heard that day and eight further interviews were scheduled. She said the investigation continues after Siad's death in order to identify everyone liable to be implicated. The trafficking file is run with the central office for the repression of human trafficking.

Cannes, 1990

Siad approached Karlsson in Sweden in 1990, when she was 20. She is 56 now. In the account she gave AFP in May 2026, he promised to make her a very famous model, followed her to Monaco and then to France, produced no work and left her financially dependent on him before raping her in a pool house near Cannes. "He was very talented," she said of his method. "He would attach to their desires, their longings, and portray himself as some kind of saviour." She said Siad then told her he had secured her a place at Elite, and that Gérald Marie, the agency's European head at the time, assaulted her in his office. Siad rejected the accusations through his lawyer Menya Arab-Tigrine, who said she hoped her client would not "bear responsibility, because he is still alive, for the actions of other men who have died."

Karlsson lodged complaints in France from 2020 onwards. What moved her case was not French investigative work but a foreign disclosure: she recognised Siad from a photograph in the files the US Justice Department released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and filed a fresh complaint in February 2026. French police heard her the following month. Her lawyers put the damage as a lost chance, the loss of any prospect that a French court would rule on what she says happened in 1990.

Seven years, two deaths

French prosecutors opened their first Epstein investigation on 23 August 2019, 13 days after he died in a New York jail cell. Police did not enter his apartment on avenue Foch until 23 September 2019, six weeks after the death and a month after the file was opened. Jean-Luc Brunel, the modelling agent charged in December 2020 with rape of minors over 15, sexual assault, criminal conspiracy and trafficking, was found hanged in his cell at La Santé prison on 19 February 2022, and the investigation against him closed with him.

Innocence en danger names Brunel and Siad together in its claim, two men at the centre of the French side of the case who died before a court reached either of them. The association has asked prosecutors to cross-check the names in the Brunel file against the US files, wants the criminal case handed to an investigating magistrate rather than left with the prosecution service, and has asked the tribunal to sit in public rather than take the simplified written procedure that would dispose of its claim on paper.

Article L141-1 and what it demands

Article L141-1 of the French Code de l'organisation judiciaire supplies the ground for both claims, and it is a narrow one. Its first line reads: "The State is bound to make good the damage caused by the defective functioning of the public justice service." Its second closes most of the door again: "Save for particular provisions, that liability is engaged only by gross fault or by a denial of justice." French courts read gross fault as conduct showing the justice service unfit to perform the mission entrusted to it, and denial of justice as a refusal to answer petitions or an abnormal delay in judging. Both claimants also invoke article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and its guarantee of a hearing within a reasonable time.

Daniel Siad

Siad was 69 and had lived in Colombes, north-west of Paris. His name appears roughly 2,000 times in the released US files, in email traffic in which he forwarded model profiles and photographs to Epstein, and he was under investigation in France over rape allegations from several women as well as over his recruitment of women for Epstein. He denied all of it and, through his lawyer, had asked to be heard. The Nanterre prosecutor's office announced his death on 22 July and opened an inquiry into its cause; an autopsy reported on 24 July found no signs of violence. Arab-Tigrine said her client was innocent and that "the unbearable waiting, the pressure and the anxiety he suffered every day will have had something to do with it."

Jean-Luc Brunel

Jean-Luc Brunel founded the agency MC2 Model Management in 2005 with as much as 1 million dollars from Epstein, and visited him at least 70 times in a Palm Beach County jail during the 13-month sentence Epstein served in Florida from 2008. French police arrested Brunel at Charles de Gaulle airport on 16 December 2020 as he boarded a flight to Senegal, and he was charged with rape of minors over 15, sexual assault, criminal conspiracy and trafficking. He denied all of it. Some 10 women had accused him of raping children and women.

Brunel was found hanged in his cell at La Santé prison in Paris on 19 February 2022, aged 75, and an official inquiry concluded suicide. The investigation against him closed with him, 14 months after his arrest and without a trial. He is one of four people so far publicly identified from the FBI memo of 15 August 2019 that named eight Epstein co-conspirators, alongside Ghislaine Maxwell, Leslie Wexner and Lesley Groff.

Innocence en danger names Brunel and Siad together in its claim, two men at the centre of the French side of the case who died in French custody or under French surveillance before a court reached either of them. The association has asked prosecutors to cross-check the names in the Brunel file against the US files, wants the criminal case handed to an investigating magistrate rather than left with the prosecution service, and has asked the tribunal to sit in public rather than take the simplified written procedure that would dispose of its claim on paper.

Aidan, Chaslin and the Lang inquiry

Fabrice Aidan, a senior French diplomat, is under examination over the viewing of child rape media between 2013 and 2017, after the foreign ministry referred his appearance in the released documents. Frédéric Chaslin, a conductor, faces an allegation of sexual harassment dating from 2016. The national financial prosecutor opened an inquiry on 6 February 2026 into suspected laundering of aggravated tax fraud by the former culture minister Jack Lang and his daughter Caroline, and officers searched the Institut du monde arabe and Lang's Paris home on 16 February. Lang said he was "totally serene, confident" and had "nothing to hide."

Gérald Marie

Gérald Marie, the man Karlsson accuses of assaulting her at Elite, has already outlasted one French investigation: the Paris prosecutor's office closed a complaint by the BBC journalist Lisa Brinkworth against him in 2023 on limitation grounds. Six women, most of them US nationals, filed fresh complaints against him in Paris on 15 July 2026 alleging rape and human trafficking, among them the former model Carré Otis, who accuses him of raping her when she was 17. Marie's lawyer Céline Bekerman said the matter was both time-barred and closed, and concerned events from nearly 40 years ago.

Massie, and the suit against the FBI

Thomas Massie read Siad's name from the floor of the US House of Representatives on the evening of 31 August 2026, five days after the two French claims were reported, in a list of 14 people he said should be investigated and prosecuted as Epstein co-conspirators. Massie said that appearing in the files does not by itself prove guilt. He filed a discharge petition the same night on a second Epstein transparency bill.

In February 2024, 12 women sued the US government over the FBI's handling of tips about Epstein, seeking 320 million dollars under the Federal Tort Claims Act and alleging that agents failed to act on reports going back to 1996. Magistrate Judge Ryon McCabe recommended on 18 August 2026 that the case survive dismissal, finding that the plaintiffs had sufficiently pleaded a plausible common law duty of care. He proposed 90 days of discovery before the government could renew its motion. The claims Karlsson and Innocence en danger have served are the first of their kind against the French state.