UBS AG processed an $8-million transfer for Ghislaine Maxwell in late 2019 that ultimately helped fund the cash purchase of the New Hampshire estate where she later went into hiding before her 2020 arrest, according to a Reuters report. 

According to U.S. Justice Department records, the Swiss bank sent the funds on November 12, 2019, from an account held for Montpelier Trust, an entity set up by Maxwell, to a TD Ameritrade account controlled by her then-husband Scott Borgerson. The money then moved through a trust used to buy the $1.1 million Bradford, New Hampshire, property known as “Tucked Away,” the news agency said. 

The transaction occurred about three months after U.S. criminal investigators served UBS with a grand jury subpoena seeking information on Maxwell’s financial dealings as part of a felony sex-trafficking investigation. UBS had also told Maxwell on August 1, 2019, that it would stop doing business with her within a month, though Reuters said the bank gave no reason. 

An internal law enforcement document discussing Treasury financial-crime records referenced a suspicious activity report, or SAR, indicating the New Hampshire property may have been purchased with proceeds from human trafficking, though it was unclear which bank filed it, Reuters said. After Maxwell’s arrest, UBS filed a SAR covering more than $18 million in transfers from her UBS accounts to Borgerson between December 2014 and July 10, 2020. 

The Reuters report does not state, and the records do not indicate, whether law enforcement officials asked UBS to retain Maxwell as a client in order to assist with an ongoing investigation.

Barclays was Maxwell’s only banking relationship outside the United States from 2017, and UBS received more than $600,000 in deposits from her Barclays account in the weeks after Jeffrey Epstein’s July 2019 arrest, as Maxwell assembled funds to pay a credit card bill. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. 

The news agency said the documents underscore UBS’s central role in managing Maxwell’s finances even though her ties to Epstein had been publicly reported years before the bank took her on as a client. Yet it remains unclear what due diligence UBS carried out when more than $14 million was deposited into Maxwell’s account in 2016, Reuters said, adding that the bank at one point managed about $19 million for her. 

Maxwell and Borgerson still held $4.1 million at UBS at the end of October 2020, according to the report.

“The pattern we’ve seen from our investigations of Epstein and a lot of other high-net-worth criminals is that the banks look the other way because they know ultra-wealthy clients can pack up and take their money across the street any time they want,” Senator Ron Wyden told the news outlet. 

Read more at Reuters