Where are the Russian Oligarchs? Ask Their Girlfriends, the “ROGs”

You’d think from the headlines all around the world that every sanctioned Russian oligarch has by now lost their super-yachts, their mansions, and their multi-national bank accounts and are living in social exile, their reputations severely tarnished.

And yet…

while the stories of supposed misery among the fabulously wealthy make for salacious reading, are they really indicative of mass financial suffering among Russia’s corrupt plutocracy? Or are they just gossipy headlines, serving a symbolic or political purpose rather than a substantive one? Most seriously of all: Could they even actually be counter-productive?

To find out what the oligarchs are really doing and thinking, I turned to what one might argue is the most reliable source of what is really going on: the “ROGs,” my invented acronym for the “Russian Oligarch Girlfriends.”

Read my full story at “Vicky Ward Investigates.”

Why Does it Matter if Juror 50 Lied in the Ghislaine Maxwell Trial?

Last week saw the critical hearing in the question of whether Ghislaine Maxwell will face a re-trial.

I thought that, given the information conveyed, the chance of a mistrial is high. (Both defense and prosecutors have to submit their briefs on the issue today.) But, according to my legal guru, David S. Weinstein, former AUSA for the Southern District of Florida-turned-litigator, what happened last Wednesday likely swings the judge’s ruling in favor of the prosecution. In other words, he’s reversed himself from what he’d told me previously. He says he now thinks it unlikely the judge will rule for a mistrial.

Read our full Q&A here.

March 8 is Critical in the Never-Ending Saga of Ghislaine Maxwell

March 8th will be a really important hearing in the never-ending saga of Ghislaine Maxwell, who, as my readers know, was convicted on five of six counts for aiding and participating in the sex trafficking and abuse of minors by the late Jeffrey Epstein.

As my readers also know, there is the chance that the trial could be deemed a mistrial.

This is all because Juror Number 50—who has asked to go by his first and middle names, Scotty David—gave media interviews after the verdict in which he said he was a victim of sexual abuse and had talked about that experience in the jury room. There had been at least two questions on the initial questionnaire for potential jurors asking if they or family members had suffered sexual abuse, and he said he could not recall how he had responded to either question. David is due in court on March 8th.

For the full story, read my Substack.

“There’s a Narrative in Russia That You Won’t Hear in the U.S. Media”

With Ukraine under siege from Russia, I thought it would be interesting to get the perspective of Russian rhythmic-gymnast-turned-supermodel Kira Dikhtyar, who has homes in both New York and Moscow. My readers will know Dikhtyar from her feature in “Chasing Ghislaine,” my recent podcast and documentary.

Dikhtyar graduated with a gold academic medal from Moscow State University, where she studied geography and geopolitics. In the wake of a violent sexual assault as a 15-year-old, Dikhtyar has been vocal about her experience and is lobbying the UN to universalize the age of consent. A dual U.S. and Russian citizen, she was in Moscow until last week. On the way to Moscow, she visited relatives in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.

I wanted to get Dikhtyar’s take on the war, since the perspective that is perhaps missing from U.S. media coverage is that of Russian citizens. And Dikhtyar is in the relatively rare position of following the media narratives in both Russia and the U.S. She spoke to me from New York. Read our conversation at Substack.

“Putin was Playing Chess While the Rest of the World was Playing Checkers”

Three weeks ago, I discussed the situation in Ukraine with Lev Parnas. Parnas, remember, is the Ukrainian-American businessman who, with Russian-born businessman Igor Fruman, worked with Rudy Giuliani to achieve a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine for the Trump administration, essentially to try to target the Bidens. Parnas and Fruman’s efforts were stopped when, on October 9, 2019, both men were arrested and charged with federal campaign finance violations. Parnas subsequently blew the whistle on much of the clandestine operation around the time Congress held impeachment hearings over the matter.

The last time I spoke with him, Parnas told me he thought Russian President Vladimir Putin was posturing and would not invade Ukraine.

Now, Parnas explains why the picture has changed. I spoke to him hours after Putin, in a rambling speech, declared two Ukrainian states—Donetsk and Luhansk—to be “independent” despite parts being under Ukrainian control, and President Joe Biden consequently announced the “first tranche” of sanctions including full blocking sanctions on two significant Russian financial institutions (which collectively hold over $80 billion in assets) and on five Russian elites and their family members.

Read our conversation on my Substack.

Jean-Luc Brunel’s Suicide Shuts One of the Main Doors to Unraveling the Mysteries of Jeffrey Epstein

With the apparent prison suicide of Jean-Luc Brunel—the owner of the model agency MC2 and a business associate of Jeffrey Epstein—early Saturday, one of the main doors to unraveling the mysteries that still surround Epstein, two and half years after Epstein’s own controversial suicide, just closed.

Just as many people hoped, in vain, that Epstein’s former girlfriend and now convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell might speak up, Brunel was seen as someone who would, potentially, have a lot of answers.

Now that that door’s been closed—in a way that’s eerily reminiscent of Epstein’s own death— the number of people under pressure to talk is dwindling.

Prince Andrew Settles to Keep Giuffre Case Out of the Courts

As I wrote last week, I have bounced a lot of the legal activity around the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell off of former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida-turned-litigator David S. Weinstein, who has been a wise sounding board. I asked him about today’s news that Prince Andrew has settled with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who had accused him of sexual abuse when she was a minor. In just weeks, Andrew was scheduled to give a deposition.

Read my conversation with Weinstein, condensed for clarity, on my Substack.

The Last Word on the New Yorker and Isaac Chotiner

This is the last time, I hope, I refer to the misleading article that Isaac Chotiner wrote in the New Yorker about my reporting on Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell over the last twenty years.

What I want to point out is that, strangely, if you bother to read Chotiner’s article closely, it shows that—amid a whole lot of opinionated, fact-less nonsense about my integrity—the answer to the central question of who buried Maria and Annie Farmer’s allegations of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse back in 2002, and then again in 2011, is…drumroll…Graydon Carter.

I’m giving you the facts about what happened during the reporting of this because I am entitled to defend myself and my reputation when it’s under attack. I hope you will read it. https://vickyward.substack.com/p/the-last-word-on-the-new-yorker-and

What the New Yorker Got Wrong

Around New Years, following the verdict in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, New Yorker staff writer Isaac Chotiner reached out to me. He asked if I would do an interview with him about my coverage over twenty years of Maxwell and Jeffery Epstein, starting with my 2003 Vanity Fair profile of Epstein.

I paused.

On the one hand, I became a journalist because I believe in truth-telling.

On the other hand, I was concerned that Conde Nast—the parent company of the New Yorker—is also the owner of Vanity Fair. The same lawyers who were responsible for vetting my 2003 Vanity Fair article are still at Conde Nast. Is this the right venue to explore what really happened back then with Graydon Carter, one of the most influential—and highly paid—editors in the firm’s history?

It turns out, I was right to be doubtful. The piece has landed and it quickly abandons any attempt at exploring how Vanity Fair buried my 2003 reporting on Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of the Farmer sisters in favor of smearing my reputation as a journalist.

The backstory is that, in 2002, I was assigned by Vanity Fair what I thought would be a straightforward story—to find out where Jeffrey Epstein’s money came from. But very quickly, things started to get complicated. I had been the first journalist to talk with two women—sisters Maria and Annie Farmer—who had on-the-record sexual abuse allegations against Epstein. I put those allegations into the story. They were ultimately removed shortly before the piece went to press. In 2015, I wrote an article in the Daily Beast in which, with cooperation from Annie Farmer, I finally got the Farmer sisters’ allegations published.

The events of what happened leading up to the removal of the Farmers’ allegations from the Vanity Fair story are a large part of what the New Yorker story gets wrong.

Carter’s and Vanity Fair’s explanations for what happened have changed over time. At the time of the original 2003 piece, Carter told me he believed Epstein (Carter said, on tape, that he was a “trusting person” because he was Canadian) and that Epstein was clearly “very sensitive” about the women. My line editor at the time told me they felt the piece read better as a business piece. In more recent years, Carter has claimed that I didn’t have the reporting to back up the Farmers’ allegations and that my reporting didn’t meet the “legal threshold” for Vanity Fair. (I disagree. I had Maria and Annie Farmer and their mother all on the record, using their names. I had artist Eric Fischl on the record, too, and businessman David Schafer. Maria had spoken to them all contemporaneously, and then Annie had confided in her mother and sister. They were terrified that Epstein—with his money and power and connections—would rip into their credibility. And, sure enough, that’s exactly what he did.) Carter’s response to my 2015 allegations was that “Epstein denied the charges at the time and since the claims were unsubstantiated and no criminal investigation had been initiated, we decided not to include them in what was a financial story.” He’s gone on now to tell the New Yorker, “My staff, to a person, did not trust her.” (And yet I worked for Vanity Fair for a decade after this. That—and the rest of my record—speaks for itself.) Carter also, according to Chotiner, has suddenly “suggested that he had not been involved in decision-making about the article.”

At no point in the process did anyone at Vanity Fair say to me that I didn’t have the reporting. If anyone had ever said that to me, I would have asked them what they needed in order to meet that standard and then I would’ve gone out and gotten it. (A point I made to Chotiner that, apparently, he felt was moot).

What I do know is that, after I’d filed a draft, Epstein went into Carter’s Vanity Fair office and had a meeting—the content of which was never discussed with me. (If he asked Carter about that, Chotiner didn’t bother to put Carter’s response in the piece. I guess what happens in the offices of senior male executives at Conde Nast is off-limits to a New Yorker staff writer.) But a few weeks following that—a period of time during which my records show that Epstein and Carter continued to communicate—the Farmers and their allegations were cut out of the article.

Given Carter’s shifting story, that mysterious meeting, and the New Yorker piece’s inaccuracies and mischaracterizations, I’ve decided to share lengthy excerpts from the transcripts of my conversations with Jeffrey Epstein and with Graydon Carter himself so that you can read them for yourself and judge what you think actually happened at Vanity Fair back then.

To be clear: I supplied Chotiner with these time-stamped transcripts of conversations I had of conversations with Epstein, and of conversations with Carter. I also supplied Chotiner with emails that have their time and date clearly marked. But I began to suspect during the fact-checking process that Chotiner didn’t appreciate my transparency about the fallibility of memories from 20 years ago. I may not have immediately recalled things he asked me (especially when phoning me up at 10pm, as he did during reporting), but I have all the “receipts” supporting my story. I have kept my transcripts and emails for years, and I was able to go back and painstakingly reconstruct the timeline—to the point that, when Chotiner shared said timeline with Carter, Carter realized he had gotten his own story wrong and is quoted in the piece as saying, “Well, this is my mistake, then. Remember, this was almost 20 years ago.”

That’s precisely why the actual documentation is so important.

For the full story—including those Epstein and Carter transcripts—read my Substack: “What The New Yorker Got Wrong.”

‘Everybody’s Absolutely Horrified’: High Society Is Bracing Itself for Ghislaine Maxwell’s Trial

When she walked into court on Monday morning for the penultimate pre-trial conference before she faces what will amount to the fight of her life, Ghislaine Maxwell looked just like she did 10 years ago. In fact, she looked better.

Thick black glossy hair. A black turtleneck sweater. Grey slacks. A bottle of Poland Spring in her hand. No cuffs anywhere. A smile, even, as she talked and shared a laugh with her lawyers, who were clearly fond of her. One brushed back her hair, another rubbed her back and shoulder, a gesture of sympathy.

It was a moment that caught me off guard and took me back in time. It reminded me of precisely why Maxwell had once had so many friends. Her vast number of acquaintances may not have all been people she was close with, because her lifestyle was so peripatetic — she was always traveling somewhere or other. Nonetheless, she drew people to her because she was funny, she was witty, she was extraordinarily charming… and, as I was reminded in that courtroom, also supremely confident.

Ghislaine Maxwell, as just about everyone knows, currently stands charged of helping the late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein traffic and sexually abuse four women, three of whom were underage, as well as lying in a civil suit. (One of the more chilling sentences in the indictment reads: “Maxwell’s presence during minor victims’ interactions with Epstein, including interactions where the minor victim was undressed or that involved sex acts with Epstein, helped put the victims at ease because an adult woman was present.”) Opening arguments are scheduled for Nov. 29. She has denied all charges.

Given the horrific nature of the allegations, it’s not surprising that on Monday — unlike 10 years ago, when she was hosting dinners at her New York townhouse, proselytizing about her efforts to preserve the oceans through her philanthropy — I didn’t see a single “friend” of hers in court. (The only supporter I saw in attendance was her sister, Isabel.)

I knew Maxwell slightly because I am part of the ex-pat British community in New York, so I ran into her from time to time over the years. And I know a good number of her friends. Or former friends, I should say. So, what are they saying amongst each other as she heads to trial?

In the past year, I noticed something as I was reporting Chasing Ghislaine, an ID special (which premieres Nov. 22 on discovery+) and an Audible podcast of the same name: Hardly any of the people who went to drinks at her house or to dinners for Prince Andrew — many of them members of the British upper classes or American plutocracy — wanted to talk about Maxwell on the record. Many of them professed that they were horrified, disgusted at the allegations she is charged with.

One person who went to dinners that included Maxwell, Epstein, and Prince Andrew told me: “I can’t remember the last time I heard anybody say, ‘Poor Ghislaine, she should be allowed to say her story.’ I think everybody’s absolutely horrified, everybody’s embarrassed that somebody in our broader circle of us could have been behaving in such a terrible way.”

But, as I reached out again in the past week to her former friends, there were those — probably more than you think — who still wonder if she is really the monster she’s been pictured as in the media. Some wonder if she may yet prevail before a jury.

Reading this, you may be shocked. I know I was.

But, as I dug further, I began to see the complexity at play: There is questioning, voiced privately among a few people who used to have dinner with her, whether the government can prove its case. Partly that’s because the allegations are from so long ago, the early 1990s to the mid-2000s, but it’s also because these people still cannot see the Hyde in the Jekyll-and-Hyde that Maxwell allegedly is — or was. Jekyll, it turns out, was very dazzling.

People who heard rumors back in the early 1990s about Maxwell “finding girls for Epstein” say that they just do not believe that the Maxwell they knew, who liked designer clothes and expensive restaurants, would have been skulking around school-gates, as has been described in the civil litigation. They just can’t imagine the visual. (That charge is not actually in the government indictment, but one imagines it could come up in court.) “I don’t believe, and nobody that’s ever met her believes that she sat in a car recruiting school-age girls. No. Nobody believes that,” one person said to me.

“The idea that Ghislaine was the sort of person who’d be bothered to visit working class areas to pick up vulnerable girls doesn’t gel with the person I knew and worked for,” says a person who worked in Epstein’s Palm Beach home. “Ghislaine had far too high regard for herself. She’d have had time for shopping on Worth Avenue, yes, not wandering around West Palm [where many of Epstein’s Florida victims lived]. That would have been beneath her.”

A question that always comes up in speculation about the trial is who will she name as also being involved. More than one person has asked me, “Who should be afraid?”

The answer to that largely depends on whether Maxwell decides to take the stand in her own defense, ordinarily a tactic of last resort but a possibility in this case, according to a couple of legal experts. The answer is that if she takes the stand, she can say anything and name anyone as long as Judge Alison Nathan deems it relevant to her defense.

That gets to the main criticism I’ve heard about the trial, which is: Why is Maxwell alone facing charges for a scheme that was a socio-economic pyramid involving many others? Even David Boies, the attorney who represents several Epstein victims (though only one, Annie Farmer, is involved in Maxwell’s trial), told me earlier this year he knows that Epstein’s schemes involved far more people – both men and women – than just Maxwell. “I think it would be a miscarriage of justice if the other co-conspirators were not called to account,” he told me, saying he expected more indictments. Yet, so far, that has not happened.

One of the Epstein survivors who is not a government witness and who asked not be named told me she believes that Maxwell should be held accountable, but she also thinks that it’s unfair that others — including Lesley Groff, Epstein’s long-time assistant and who was one of four Epstein employees named in a non-prosecution agreement signed by Epstein in 2008 — are not on trial. This survivor never met Maxwell during the period she visited with Epstein, but, she says, she met Groff several times and Groff sometimes scheduled meetings between her and Epstein. Groff’s lawyer, Michael Bachner, told me that Groff was simply a business associate who had no knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities. “Prosecutors have indicated in multiple conversations with me that, based on the evidence they have so far uncovered during the course of their lengthy investigation, they do not intend to bring criminal charges against Lesley Groff,” he says.

Bachner also says that, as far as he is aware, Groff will not be a government witness at Maxwell’s trial.

But it seems clear from court papers that other former Epstein employees will be government witnesses, and it’s precisely this sort of perceived cherry-picking that leaves a handful of people privately wondering if the legal process has now gotten weighted to an unfair extreme against one person who was not the mastermind criminal at the heart of what was a vast global enterprise.

That person, no one disputes, was Jeffrey Epstein.

A lawyer who has been in negotiations with Epstein’s estate on behalf of some survivors told me that one rumor going around is that Epstein changed his will the day before he died in jail in August 2019, reportedly a suicide, because he learned Maxwell was cooperating against him as he faced the charges of sex trafficking and abuse of minors. He took her out of the will is the scuttlebutt, according to my source. (Epstein’s lawyer Reid Weingarten says he does not know if this is true, but he doubts it).

But if Epstein did in fact deliberately kill himself, knowing Maxwell would wind up being his substitute in court, that narrative plays into what Ian Maxwell, Ghislaine’s brother, has been saying on TV: that his sister has been put on trial not for her crimes, but for Epstein’s. (This is a line Maxwell’s defense will take, judging by pre-trial filings).

Most people I spoke to think that no one is really listening to Ian. But a handful, including one person who knew Epstein and got financial advice from him for over 20 years, disagree: “Essentially we are about to watch the trial of Jeffrey Epstein — only Ghislaine is taking his place. This is about him. He’s dead so she’s got pay the price he should have, for justice to be perceived to have been done.”

This person adds: “And, by the way, I didn’t even like her.”

Vicky Ward is the host of Chasing Ghislaine, an Audible podcast and docuseries premiering on discovery+ on Nov. 22 and ID on Dec. 3.