Is there a Central Asia connection to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation?
U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, is urging the U.S. Department of Justice to trace financial transactions that he says show Epstein used Russian banks to process payments in a sex trafficking scheme that targeted women from Turkmenistan and other countries.
Wyden, the top Democrat on the Republican-controlled Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement this month that committee investigators were allowed to look at some Epstein records in the Treasury Department building while President Joe Biden was in office last year. The files detail several thousand wire transfers totaling more than $1 billion going in and out of just one of Epstein’s bank accounts, he said.
“The file shows Epstein used multiple Russian banks, which are now under sanctions, to process payments related to sex trafficking,” Wyden said. “A lot of the women and girls he targeted came from Russia, Belarus, Turkey, and Turkmenistan. You shudder to think about the kinds of people who must have been involved in trafficking these women and girls out of those countries and into Epstein’s web of abuse.”
The administration of President Donald Trump had promised openness in the Epstein case but has since angered some supporters by declining to release more documents about the disgraced financier, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial after being charged with the sex trafficking of minors. The official cause of death was suicide. Conspiracy theories have swirled over the circumstances of Epstein’s death, his relationships with wealthy and influential people, and how he was able to avoid scrutiny for so long.
Investigative journalist Julie K. Brown, who conducted key reporting on the Epstein case, noted Wyden’s efforts as well as what she described as “some resistance” from justice and treasury officials. She spoke in an interview with The Daily Beast podcast this week.
“Senator Ron Wyden is looking into the financial aspect of Epstein’s crimes and there’s some evidence that he was doing business overseas and I think that’s the next front that we have to look at, is to follow the money – how he made his money, who he was paying, who he was getting money from,” said Brown, author of Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story.
Turkmenistan has not made significant efforts to meet basic standards for the elimination of human trafficking but has taken some steps to address the problem, according to a U.S. Department of State report in 2024.
