#sirkierstarmerpm — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #sirkierstarmerpm, aggregated by home.social.
-
BBC Uncovers Epstein’s Abuse in Four London Flats
Epstein housed abuse victims in London flats, BBC reveals – BBC News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB9wFreWqco
A BBC investigation into millions of US Department of Justice records says Jeffrey Epstein housed abuse victims in four London flats for years after the Metropolitan Police declined to investigate trafficking allegations made in 2015.
The evidence, drawn from receipts, emails and bank records in the Epstein Files, links the properties to repeated cross-Channel movements of women, some of whom were allegedly coerced into recruiting others. The report says more than 50 Eurostar tickets were bought between 2011 and 2019, with 33 purchased after the 2015 complaint.
The findings raise serious questions about missed opportunities to intervene and whether UK authorities failed in their duty to investigate credible allegations of trafficking.
BBC files expose extensive UK trafficking links
The BBC’s review of the released records indicates that Epstein maintained at least four flats in Kensington and Chelsea to house women, many from Russia, eastern Europe and elsewhere, after the Met decided not to pursue Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 trafficking allegations.
According to the report, some of the women were later identified as victims of Epstein’s abuse, while others were allegedly pressured into recruiting more young women. The records also point to regular travel between London and Paris, suggesting a structured operation that continued until Epstein’s arrest in 2019.
Missed opportunities and legal obligations
Human rights lawyer Tessa Gregory said it was “staggering” that no UK investigation had been launched despite credible trafficking allegations, pointing to the state’s obligations under Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Former anti-slavery commissioner Kevin Hyland said the available evidence should have been more than enough to trigger an inquiry, arguing that repeated travel bookings, housing arrangements and victim complaints were all warning signs that should have been acted on.
The report also says British authorities knew by 2020 that Epstein had rented at least one of the London flats identified in the files.
Inside the coercion and control tactics
Messages cited in the files suggest Epstein presented himself as a landlord who paid rent for women he housed, while using that support to create dependence and control. In some cases, he is said to have framed rent as either a gift in exchange for work or a debt to be repaid.
The records also describe overcrowded living conditions, payments for English language courses, and attempts to involve women in identifying or recruiting others. Together, they portray a system of coercion, dependency and cross-border movement.
Renewed scrutiny and possible reopening
Following the release of the Epstein Files, UK police forces are reviewing new material through a National Police Chiefs’ Council group. The Met has said it is assessing information suggesting London airports may have been used as transit points in trafficking routes.
No UK-based individual has been charged as a result of these latest disclosures. However, the scale of the evidence and the criticism of earlier inaction are likely to intensify calls for fresh investigations into Epstein’s UK network and any accomplices who may still have escaped scrutiny.
Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire sex offender, remains in the headlines, with many unanswered questions still surrounding his global sex-trafficking operation.
A review of the millions of documents in the Epstein Files, released in January, suggests that Epstein had established part of his sex-trafficking network in the UK.
The investigation found that Epstein had an established network in the UK, with people who helped him there. It also identified flats where some of the women were housed, while credit-card receipts showed how their lives were funded. There was also travel in and out of the UK. Despite this, there has never been a full police investigation into his activities in Britain or into any of the people who helped him.
The reporting focused on the final years of Epstein’s life, after Virginia Giuffre, one of his accusers, made a complaint to the Metropolitan Police in 2015, saying she had been trafficked to the UK by Epstein in the early 2000s. She took her own life last year.
Receipts in the files show that after 2015, Epstein was routinely moving women back and forth from the UK to France via Eurostar. The women would then end up at Epstein’s 18-room central Paris home. One survivor said he liked being in the city because he was virtually anonymous and there were always girls there waiting for him.
Back in the UK, the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea appears repeatedly in the Epstein Files. It was there that four addresses were identified that had been rented by Epstein for some of the women he abused to live in.
Kevin Hyland, a former senior Metropolitan Police detective and the UK’s first Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, said:
People are outraged that somebody came forward and said, “I was trafficked by this man”, and yet he was just allowed to carry on. Who in the police made that decision? A lot of people will say, “Epstein’s dead, so there’s nothing that can be done.” But we would not have said that about Jimmy Savile, and look what that revealed.
Survivors of Epstein in the United States are now calling for a UK public inquiry to establish why no investigation was ever carried out into Epstein’s abuse.
Human rights lawyer Tessa Gregory said the UK has a legal obligation to investigate human trafficking, whether or not a victim comes forward:
There appear to be credible allegations that young women and girls were trafficked into and through the UK by Epstein and his associates for the purposes of sexual exploitation. The UK state, even if no victims come forward, has a positive legal obligation to conduct a prompt, effective and independent investigation.
These findings were put to the Metropolitan Police, which said it was confident it had fulfilled its legal duties and was still assessing whether UK airports had been used as transit points in the facilitation of sexual exploitation and human trafficking.
There are now serious questions about whether Epstein’s sex-trafficking network could at least have been interrupted if a full police investigation had been launched in the UK after Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 complaint.
Now it is not clear whether, or why, Keir Starmer, as prosecutor, ever carried out discovery in relation to Egov.co.uk, because there are no documents showing that his office examined it either as a mechanism for holding details on vulnerable children who had been drawn into prostitution in Rotherham and Rochdale, or as something connected to the Education Acts, whose operation appears to have allowed children to be removed from effective oversight by failing to attend a virtual school. You really could not make this up: the process is described there.
Had that examination been carried out, he would, in my opinion, have seen that the system was being run in breach of the EU Adequacy Agreement through the use of EU servers. So what is this arrangement that, in my view, placed vulnerable or disabled children at even greater risk through Gary Daniels’ EGOV.UK.COM and EPEP.TV? It is a payment made by a local authority for the holding of a registration containing the details of those children, including a photograph and other information, in a form that is disturbingly akin to a dating app.
“If this material was relevant, why does it not appear on the record of the head of the investigatory unit, given that it could have led to scrutiny of the Education Acts and the way vulnerable children were removed from effective oversight?”
Local-media snippets say Jeffrey Epstein was “directly contacted about” or “directly alerted to the sale of” at least one of the Isle of Wight’s famous historic mansions. That supports interest in at least one Island property, not “all the housing.” The Riverside Centre on the Isle of Wight is publicly described as one of Community Action Isle of Wight’s entities, and official Isle of Wight Council material shows it being used as a venue for council/Virtual School and SEND-related events.Organisations At The Riverside – The Riverside Centre | Isle of Wight
The County Press story headline is “Jeffrey Epstein files linked to Isle of Wight mansion sale” or “Historic Isle of Wight mansion gets unexpected mention in Jeffrey Epstein files”; search and social snippets from the paper say Epstein was “directly contacted about” or “directly alerted to the sale of one of the Island’s most famous historic mansions.” one snippet also says the mansion was the Island’s “most famous and most scandal-soaked” historic mansion. Files from the Epstein Transpiracy Act provide informationThe Mark Lloyd email to Jeffrey Epstein dated 20 May 2015 appears in DOJ Volume 11 as EFTA02501625 that this Mansion house was named Appuldurcombe House, Wroxall Isle of White was being offered for £6 million, with restoration costs estimated at a further £8 million to £10 million. Perhaps the Question should be why was John Lloyd in contact with Epstein in the first place?
Is this opening up a string of properties and potential other homes owned by Epstein?https://www.countypress.co.uk/news/25825515.jeffrey-epstein-files-linked-isle-wight-mansion-sale/
April 26, 2026Type your email…
Subscribe
Related Posts
- BBC Uncovers Epstein’s Abuse in Four London Flats
- Breach of Article 3(2) of Directive (EU) 2017/1371) FOIA case 2025-1058-F
- FEDERAL ADMINISTRATIVE APPEAL AND FORENSIC STATEMENT OF FACTS
- Mandelson’s Appointment: Key Dates and Responsibilities Explained
- For FMB unit: [EXTERNAL] FOIA Appeal / Request for Clarification – Epstein Records (EFTA01656139–41)
-
Mandelson’s Appointment: Key Dates and Responsibilities Explained
Hansard says Starmer made the decision to appoint Mandelson on 18 December 2024 and announced it on 20 December 2024. The Robbins appointment notice is from 8 January 2025. So Robbins was not FCDO PUS when Mandelson was appointed/announced.
The basic chronology is real. Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador was announced on 20 December 2024. Robbins’ appointment as FCDO Permanent Under-Secretary was announced on 8 January 2025, and FCDO records list him as appointed from 20 January 2025. So, he was not responsible for the original 20 December announcement itself [1].
But that does not mean he had no later responsibility. The Commons record says the vetting process ran from 23 December 2024 to 28 January 2025, UKSV recommended denying Mandelson developed vetting on 28 January, and FCDO officials granted it on 29 January. Starmer’s argument in Hansard was not “Robbins caused the original appointment announcement”; it was that Robbins should have shared the later vetting problem with ministers before Mandelson took up post, and again afterwards. In fact, Hansard contains almost exactly the point everyone is making: one MP said Robbins was appointed after the Mandelson announcement, and Starmer replied that Robbins still should have told him before Mandelson took up the job and at later points too [2].
On the second claim that Mandelson was appointed by ministers rather than officials is broadly consistent with the official record. Robbins told the Foreign Affairs Committee that heads of mission can be appointed directly by ministers and that Mandelson’s appointment fell into that category; Sir Chris Wormald also described it as a direct appointment by ministers. So that part is not some hidden revelation. The real dispute is over who handled the subsequent vetting information and who told Ministers what, and when [3].
So my take is: the posts are not wholly made up, but they are selective and argumentative. They are right that Robbins did not make the original December appointment announcement. They are misleading if they imply that this alone settles whether he bore any responsibility later, because the official case against him is tied to the January vetting decision and later disclosures to ministers and Parliament. The extra stuff in the second post about a “love affair” is just inflammatory speculation, not evidence.
Hansard, Commons, 20 April 2026, Security Vetting, PM statement, lines 54–55.
He also repeats the same basic point later in the exchange: at line 443 the Prime Minister stated: “I have failed the Epstein survivors by my decision regarding Mandelson.” For reference: Crime Agency Professional Standards IX.8.26; CCG0000122359; Action Fraud NFRC241207046189; SDR-026-0161; ICO IC-461437-H0W6; PHSO C-2058682 and C-2195214; Met Police FOIA 47533; LGSCO FOI2025/08198; IBAC CASE-20246844; HMCTS 79534040; PALS 2602-0072; NIC-803189-J4G8C; Clinton Library FOIA 2025-1058-F.
Having looked at Hansard, the PM was making two different claims, and that is the key to the chronology. He said the UKSV recommendation to deny Mandelson developed vetting should have been shared with him before Mandelson took up the post, but he also said he only discovered last Tuesday evening that the clearance had been granted against that recommendation. Separately, he said that on 10 September 2025, after Bloomberg reported fresh details, it became clear to him that Mandelson’s earlier answers to No.10’s due-diligence questions were not truthful, and that is why he sacked him. Those are not the same thing [4].
Olly Robbins, the “not in employment” point does not work for September 2025. GOV.UK says Robbins was appointed Permanent Under-Secretary at the FCDO in January 2025 and served there from January 2025 to April 2026. The PM’s statement also explicitly refers to Robbins as “the then Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office” on 16 September 2025, and the Foreign Affairs Committee letter from that date is jointly signed by Yvette Cooper and Oliver Robbins [5]. and records that Sir Philip Barton departed 17 January 2025 [6].
Where your timing point does land is narrower: Robbins was not the FCDO Permanent Secretary when Mandelson’s appointment was publicly announced on 20 December 2024, because Robbins was only appointed in January 2025. So he cannot sensibly be blamed for the original December announcement itself. But he was in post for the January 2025 vetting/clearance stage and for the September 2025 committee statement/review stage, which is why the PM is targeting him over those later stages instead.
So, the clean reading of Hansard is: no contradiction on September 2025 employment, but there is a distinction between responsibility for the December 2024 appointment announcement and responsibility for the later vetting and disclosure decisions.
- PM says he only found out on 14 April 2026: page 19, lines 1571–1581 — “Last Tuesday evening, 14 April, I found out for the first time…” that on 29 January 2025 FCDO officials granted DV clearance against the UKSV recommendation [7].
- PM says the recommendation should have been shared before Mandelson took up post: page 19 to 20, lines 1664–1670 — “the recommendation… could and should have been shared with me before he took up his post” and “I would not have gone ahead with the appointment.” [7].
- PM then shifts to September 2025: page 20, lines 1671–1678 — he says that on 10 September 2025, after Bloomberg reported fresh details, it became clear to him that Mandelson’s answers in the due-diligence exercise “were not truthful”, and he sacked him [7].
- PM says Robbins and the Foreign Secretary signed a September 2025 statement: page 20, lines 1711–1719 — on 16 September 2025, the Foreign Secretary and “the then permanent secretary of the Foreign Office, Sir Olly Robbins” gave a signed statement to the Foreign Affairs Committee saying DV clearance had been granted before Mandelson took up post [7].
- PM says they should have been told in September 2025 as well: page 20, lines 1741–1748 — he says he does not accept that the Cabinet Secretary could not have been told in September 2025 during his review, and does not accept that the Foreign Secretary could not have been told when making statements to the Committee [7].
- Opposition puts the “misled the House” point directly: page 20, lines 1789–1793 — “Earlier today, Downing Street admitted that the Prime Minister inadvertently misled the House… under the ministerial code, he has a duty to correct the record at the earliest opportunity.” [7].
On the employment point, the official record shows Robbins was announced as the new FCDO Permanent Under-Secretary on 8 January 2025, and another FCDO document says he was in post from 20 January 2025. So he was in office in September 2025, but he was not the FCDO Permanent Secretary when Mandelson’s appointment was announced on 20 December 2024 [8].
So, the tighter argument is not really “Robbins wasn’t employed in September 2025” as FCDO Permanent Under-Secretary— Hansard and GOV.UK cut against that. The sharper criticism is that the PM’s statement blends two different moments:
(1) September 2025, when he says he realised Mandelson’s due-diligence answers were untruthful, and
(2) 14 April 2026, when he says he first learned UKSV had recommended denying DV clearance. Hansard shows both claims sitting in the same statement.And yes—if you mean Hansard, this issue is there.
[3] https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/16673/pdf/
April 21, 2026Type your email…
Subscribe
Related Posts
- Mandelson’s Appointment: Key Dates and Responsibilities Explained
- For FMB unit: [EXTERNAL] FOIA Appeal / Request for Clarification – Epstein Records (EFTA01656139–41)
- Emily’s Case: Legal Oversights and Perjury Concerns
- The question everyone is asking
- More Epstein Flight Data