Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor, said on 10 September that investigators pursuing the French Epstein trafficking case have obtained further names of potential recruiters, have counted 26 victims and had fixed an interview with Daniel Siad shortly before the modelling scout at the centre of the French case died on 20 July.

Siad was found dead at his home in Colombes, in Hauts-de-Seine, five months and two days after the investigation opened and without a single question having been put to him by police. Two claims against the French state followed within five weeks, one from the association Innocence en danger on 31 July and one from the Swedish former model Ebba P. Karlsson on 21 August.

"I want to say this to the victims who were moved, obviously, by the death of Daniel Siad, because an interview with him was scheduled shortly, we have obtained other names of potential recruiters," Beccuau said in an interview on France Inter, in remarks the AFP wire reproduced.

What the prosecutor counted

Beccuau said 24 of the 26 counted victims are clearly identified and that eight remain to be interviewed, some of them living outside France. Her office had given a count of 24 women on 22 July, with 16 heard since 19 March and eight further interviews scheduled. Eight interviews were outstanding on both dates.

"Of these 26 victims, 13 had not previously appeared in any case," Beccuau said. The earlier cases are the file on Jean-Luc Brunel and the case against Gérald Marie, the former head of Elite Model Management in Europe.

Investigators have taken the case to New York, Paris, Saint-Tropez and Cannes. Beccuau said they are examining allegations involving French nationals and victims abused abroad by French nationals, and gave the spread of the inquiry as her answer to complainants who have called it slow. "We are covering a very wide area," she said. "The Epstein network, for us, is a labyrinthine network. To get out of it, it is not just a single Ariadne's thread you have to pull on, it is dozens and dozens of threads."

Karlsson answered the same day through a statement the AFP wire published, asking the prosecutor's office not to wait. "Question now the people who should be questioned," she said. "These crimes go back several decades. The people involved are ageing. Every delay has consequences."

The trafficking investigation

The Paris prosecutor's office opened the trafficking investigation on 18 February 2026, under headings of trafficking in human beings by an organised gang and criminal conspiracy to prepare a crime. Two referent magistrates had been assigned four days earlier to read the released US material for offences within the scope of French law. The Central Office for the Suppression of Trafficking in Human Beings, OCRTEH, has the file.

Article 225-4-3 of the penal code makes trafficking committed by an organised gang a crime punishable by 20 years of imprisonment and a fine of 3 million euros. Trafficking in its basic form under article 225-4-1 is punishable by seven years, and by 10 where the victim is a minor.

Beccuau announced on the same day a second investigation into the financial ramifications of the released files and assigned magistrates as entry points for complaints, reports and other information reaching her office. She called on victims to file complaints or give witness accounts to feed French and foreign investigations.

Both Paris investigations remain preliminary. No investigating judge has been appointed to either, and nobody has been placed under formal examination in them. Innocence en danger asked in April that the criminal side be handed to an investigating judge, which would give complainants civil party status and access to the file.

Beccuau said in May that her office had pulled out Epstein's computers, telephone records and address books again, and that she would make requests for international assistance. About 20 suspected victims had come forward by 17 May, roughly half of them new to investigators.

The scout who was never questioned

Siad was born in Algeria on 28 October 1957, moved to Sweden in the 1980s and had Swedish, French and Algerian citizenship. He worked as a fashion photographer and then as a scout for What's Up Management and MC2 Model Management, the agency Brunel founded in 2005 with as much as 1 million dollars from Epstein, and lived between Stockholm, Paris and Barcelona. Between 2017 and 2020 he represented the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia in the Middle East.

Siad's name appears roughly 2,000 times in the released US files, which record him forwarding model profiles, photographs and videos to Epstein. He told RTL in May that he had introduced only a dozen or 15 young women to Epstein over 15 years, that the contact was strictly professional and that Epstein had used him.

Karlsson filed a complaint with the Paris prosecutor's office in February 2026 alleging Siad raped her at a villa near Cannes in 1990, when she was 20. She had lodged complaints in France from 2020 onwards and recognised Siad from a photograph in the material the US Justice Department released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. French police heard her in March 2026. At least five women have accused him of rape or trafficking in complaints covering 1990 to 2020, and his name has also been raised in connection with a German model who disappeared in 2015. He denied everything and, through his lawyer Menya Arab-Tigrine, had asked to be heard.

Prosecutors placed Siad under telephone interception rather than in custody. "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," Beccuau said in a statement on 22 July. He was 68 when he died. Arab-Tigrine said he died of a heart attack and that "the unbearable waiting, the pressure and the anxiety he suffered every day will have had something to do with it." The Nanterre prosecutor's office opened an inquiry into the cause of death, and prosecutors said an autopsy had not established the cause but that investigators had found no signs of violence. He was never charged and never arrested.

Two claims against the French state

Innocence en danger served the French state on 31 July, alleging defective functioning of the public justice service, gross fault and denial of justice, and seeking 15,000 euros in damages. Jean Sannier acts for the association, which was founded by Homayra Sellier and which triggered the opening of the first French Epstein file in 2019. Its claim puts the grievance at seven years rather than five months, names Brunel and Siad together and asks the tribunal to hear the matter in public rather than dispose of it on paper.

Karlsson served her own claim on 21 August through William Bourdon and Colomba Grossi, who argue that the failure to take Siad into custody or to interview him amounts to culpable inaction by the public justice service. She seeks 50,000 euros. "There was the opportunity to hear him, but nothing was done for months," Karlsson said. "We are asking ourselves why he was not arrested."

Article L141-1 of the Code de l'organisation judiciaire supplies the ground for both claims. 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 reads: "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.

First hearings in both claims are set for 2027. Neither the agent judiciaire de l'État nor the ministry of justice has responded publicly to either claim.

The modelling agents

Brunel was arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport on 16 December 2020 as he boarded a flight to Senegal, and was charged with rape of a minor over 15, sexual assault, criminal conspiracy and trafficking. Some 10 women had accused him. He 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 case was closed by a non-lieu in 2023 on the ground that he was dead. The Paris prosecutor's office announced in February 2026 a re-examination of the file, and Innocence en danger has asked prosecutors to cross-check the names in it against the released US material.

Prosecutors closed the case against Marie on 13 February 2023 on the ground that the alleged offences were prescribed. At least 15 women had brought allegations covering the 1980s and 1990s, among them Karen Mulder, who said she spent five months in a mental health facility after being raped by him, and Carré Otis, who alleged he raped her when she was 17. Investigators met 11 of the women in February 2021.

Otis filed a fresh complaint on 5 June 2026 alleging rape of a minor and trafficking in human beings. Six further women, most of them US nationals, lodged complaints with civil party status on 15 July 2026 before the senior investigating judge at the Paris judicial court, two of them speaking for the first time and one of them a minor at the time of the alleged offences. Céline Bekerman, his lawyer, said the matter was time-barred and closed and concerned events from nearly 40 years ago.

Marie, who is in his mid-70s, gave an interview to RTL in August. "I have never raped anyone," he said. "I have always behaved consistently and properly with women. I love women. I cannot see myself forcing one." He said he met Epstein once.

What prescription allows

A rape of an adult committed in 1990 fell outside the limitation period in 2000 under the rules in force before 2017, which is the ground on which the Marie case was dropped. Four reforms since 27 February 2017 have lengthened the periods, delayed their starting points and changed how they are computed, and none of them revives conduct already prescribed.

Trafficking charged as an enterprise over a period of years covers conduct that a single-act charge does not, and it is the qualification Beccuau's office opened on in February. Sexual harassment has had a six-year limitation period since March 2017. Frédéric Chaslin, a conductor, faces an allegation of sexual harassment dating from 2016 that went to the Paris prosecutor's office in February 2026 on a transfer from Thonon-les-Bains, and that six-year period expired in 2022.

The financial strand

The National Financial Prosecutor's Office opened a preliminary investigation on 6 February into Jack Lang, the former culture minister, and his daughter Caroline, on suspicion of laundering the proceeds of aggravated tax fraud through a company set up with Epstein in the US Virgin Islands. Lang's name appears more than 600 times in the released files. Caroline Lang, a film producer, resigned as head of the independent producers' union on 2 February. Jack Lang, 86, resigned the presidency of the Arab World Institute on 7 February, after the foreign ministry, which supplies half of the institute's 12.3 million euro annual budget, pressed him to go. Police searched the institute's Paris headquarters on 16 February.

"The accusations being made against me are baseless," Lang said. "I fear nothing and I am clean as a whistle."

Fabrice Aidan, a foreign affairs secretary on leave for personal reasons, was referred to prosecutors by Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot on 11 February under article 40 of the code of criminal procedure, over emails exchanged with Epstein from 2010, some of which attached United Nations documents and reports. Aidan served at the United Nations from 2006 to 2013 and later at UNESCO, and was dismissed from the energy company Engie. The suspicions against him cover the viewing of child rape media between 2013 and 2017 and corruption.

"When I learnt about it, I was appalled," Barrot said of the correspondence.

Gérard Araud, France's permanent representative to the United Nations at the time, has said the FBI notified him that Aidan had accessed child rape media sites, which led to Aidan's recall to France in 2013. Jade Dousselin, who acts for Aidan, said the FBI investigated without any charge being brought. "There was never any consultation of child pornography sites," she said.

The commission of inquiry that was refused

Yaël Braun-Pivet, the president of the National Assembly, ruled out a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the French side of the case on 10 February. "The parliamentary commission of inquiry must not compete with the courts," she said. Gérard Larcher, the president of the Senate, refused a request from 17 senators on 30 April, on the same ground.

La France insoumise tabled a resolution on 5 February, numbered 2452, for a 30-member commission of inquiry into French nationals in the Epstein network, possible state support, intelligence failures and the taking of victim testimony. Antoine Léaument, Danièle Obono and Mathilde Panot are among its signatories. It was referred to the law commission and has not been debated.

A petition on the National Assembly's own platform, opened on 21 May, has 191 signatures against the 100,000 needed for the assembly to consider it.

The evidence in US hands

Prosecutors in Poland, Norway and Latvia and police in Britain said on 9 September that the US Justice Department has not answered their requests for Epstein evidence, a year after the first files were released. Norway has charged three former senior officials, Polish prosecutors opened a trafficking investigation on 10 March and Latvian police have identified a victim on their territory. No charge has followed the files in the United States.

France is not among the four jurisdictions that reported a non-response, and no French request to the US Justice Department has been confirmed on the public record since Beccuau said in May that she would make requests for international assistance.

Epstein was a part-time resident of Paris for close to two decades, in an apartment on avenue Foch. Investigators searched it on 23 September 2019, six weeks after he died in federal custody in New York while awaiting trial on federal rape trafficking charges, and a month after the first French preliminary investigation opened on 23 August 2019.

Nobody has been charged in either French investigation. The Paris prosecutor's office and OCRTEH take complaints and witness accounts directly, on Beccuau's public appeal of 18 February.