Ghislaine Maxwell Offers to Surrender U.K., French Citizenship in Exchange For Bail

Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite currently in jail in the U.S., has offered to give up her U.K. and French citizenship in exchange for bail.

Maxwell, 59, is incarcerated in a New York jail while facing charges of helping convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein groom young girls. She was arrested in July 2020 and has been denied bail twice as she is deemed a flight risk.

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“If the court deems it a necessary condition of release, Ms Maxwell will formally commence the procedure to renounce her foreign citizenship,” her lawyers filed in a court motion on Tuesday. The offer “should satisfy any concerns the court may have that Ms Maxwell may try to seek a safe haven in France or the United Kingdom,” Maxwell’s lawyers said.

The renunciation of Maxwell’s U.K. citizenship can be immediate, while the process of giving up her French nationality can be “expedited,” her lawyers said. Maxwell’s lawyers said that she had no desire to leave the U.S. and suggested that her assets, and that of her husband, Scott Bergerson, be placed in a monitored account, thereby preventing her from using the money to leave the country.

Maxwell, who has lived in the U.S. for some 30 years, was born in France and grew up in the U.K. Prosecutors allege that she recruited women for Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail in 2019, while facing numerous sex-related charges. Her trial is in July and she faces up to 35 years in prison if convicted.

Epstein’s social proximity to Prince Andrew caused the British Royal to take a hiatus from public life.

Maxwell is the daughter of late media mogul Robert Maxwell, whose colorful life and death will soon be the subject of a Working Title documentary series based on a book by “The Dig” writer John Preston.

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