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- Ghislaine Maxwell, alleged madam of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, is selling her London home.
- The sale is to raise money for her legal defense, the WSJ reported, citing a family spokesman.
- Maxwell faces charges that she and Epstein groomed and abused young girls. She has pleaded not guilty.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Ghislaine Maxwell, the alleged madam of the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, is selling her London home to raise funds for her legal defense, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing her family's spokesman.
Maxwell has been held without bail in a New York jail since her arrest in July on charges alleging that she and Epstein groomed and abused young girls between 1994 and 1997. She has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The British socialite's house is on Kinnerton Street in Belgravia, an upmarket area of London just south of Hyde Park.
The sale of the property will soon be completed, Brian Basham, a spokesman for the Maxwell family, told the Journal. He declined to reveal the buyer or the sale price.
Houses in Belgravia have sold for between $3.6 million and $11.2 million over the past two years, according to property records seen by the Journal.
"Ghislaine will be sad to see the house sold," Basham told The Daily Telegraph Thursday.
"She is devastated by all this. She will have a lot of good memories. She will be terribly sad to sell the house. It was her refuge in London."
But Maxwell faced difficulties from her bank, Barclays, when trying to sell the house, the Journal reported. Barclays closed her account in February following an initial £130,000 deposit from the property buyer, according to a letter from the bank, seen by the Journal.
Barclays said in the letter that customers were not allowed to put the bank in a position where it "might break a law, regulation, code or other duty."
Basham told the Journal that the Maxwell family has now found a way to complete the sale even though the bank account has been closed.
One of Epstein's accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, claims she was brought to Maxwell's London house in 2001 when she was 17 and was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew. This is where the infamous photo was taken of Prince Andrew wrapping his arm around Giuffre's waist.
In a 139-page memoir written by Giuffre, she described Maxwell as an integral part of Epstein's sex ring.
Epstein died by suicide in August 2019 in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial on charges related to the sex abuse and trafficking of girls as young as 14 years old.