Paris (AFP)

The Paris prosecutor's office announced Friday that it had opened an investigation into "rape" and "sexual assault", particularly on minors, in the case of US financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was prosecuted in the United States for abuses against teenage girls. died in prison early August.

"The investigations, entrusted to the Central Office for the Repression of Violence against Persons, will aim to uncover possible offenses committed not only on the national territory, but also abroad to the detriment of French victims". as possible "authors of French nationality", says the Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz in a statement.

This preliminary investigation was also opened by the heads of "criminal conspiracy to commit crimes" and "criminal conspiracy to commit offenses punishable by at least 5 years of imprisonment".

The prosecution made this decision after carrying out "checks and cross-checks on the basis of the elements" that were transmitted to it and after having had "exchanges" with the competent US authorities, the statement said.

The association Innocence in danger had seized the floor in late July after the arrest of Epstein in the United States and had published on August 12, two days after the death of Mr. Epstein, an open letter calling the Paris prosecutor to open investigation.

On Thursday, she said she had received ten testimonies mainly from victims of acts "committed on French soil" in connection with the multimillionaire who died at the age of 66, who had an apartment in Paris.

In a testimony dating from 2011 but recently made public in the United States, a complainant also accused the financier and jet-setter of abusing very young French women who had been sent to her as a "surprise birthday present".

According to Anglo-Saxon media, she also assured that these girls had been sent to the United States by a former close friend of Epstein, French Jean-Luc Brunel, founder of modeling agencies Karin Models and MC2 Model Management, which has was seen in early July in an upscale evening near Paris.

Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on 6 July and charged in New York with organizing, from 2002 to 2005 at least, a network of dozens of girls, some college girls, with whom he would have had forced sex in his many properties, especially in Manhattan and Florida.

He was found dead on August 10 in his New York cell, the results of the autopsy confirming a suicide by hanging.

© 2019 AFP