Ghislaine Maxwell, former associate of disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, managed to raise a substantial sum of money via a complex scheme involving the company of her "secretive husband" Scott Borgerson, The Times reports.
According to the newspaper, in 2017, mere weeks after Maxwell reached an out-of-court settlement in a defamation case with Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Guiffre, the former took out a £2 million mortgage against her three-storey home in London.
The charge on the property in question was reportedly placed by Pleuston LLC, a company owned by Borgerson.
"The business is lending the money, rather than the husband directly", a mortgage expert said as quoted by the newspaper. "It's [an] incredibly complex [structure] to raise money".
The expert also reportedly described the loan as unusual due to the amount of money lent being higher that the value of the property.
The money procured via the loan could've been used by Maxwell to pay the aforementioned settlement, the newspaper suggests, noting that in 2016, Ghislaine sold her "$15 million house in New York" after striking a confidential deal with two of Epstein's accusers.
The charge on the house was reportedly removed from Land Registry documents in 2020, the year Maxwell was arrested in the United States, though it remains unclear whether the loan was actually repaid; the building is apparently still owned by Ghislaine.
The documents cited by the newspaper reportedly come from a 2017 defamation lawsuit filed by Giuffre.
Having been arrested in New Hampshire in 2020, Maxwell is currently awaiting trial in New York on charges of playing a role in the "sexual exploitation and abuse of multiple minor girls" by Epstein.