In June 2011, the U.S. Department of State received an urgent request from an American businessman who sought a second U.S passport for impending trips to Europe and multiple African nations.
“I am frequently required on extremely short notice to schedule international trips with itineraries to multiple destinations requiring me to obtain multiple visas at the same time, which is simply not possible on such short notice without a second passport,” the letter said.
The applicant, who identified himself as the president of an international financial consulting firm, said he had business trips scheduled in the coming weeks to France, Sierra Leone, Mali and Gabon.
“Please issue me a second passport so I may have the 3 visas issued for Africa while I am using my current passport in France,” he wrote.
The businessman’s name: Jeffrey Edward Epstein.
Three years earlier, Epstein had pleaded guilty in Florida to solicitation of an underaged girl, a felony that required him to register as a sex offender for life.
The letter is found among several passport applications and renewal forms submitted over three decades by Epstein, whose staggering wealth and proximity to power have long defied ready explanation.
More than 50 pages from Epstein’s files were obtained by ABC News in a public records request to the State Department. The records span from the early 1980s, when Epstein was an unknown bushy-haired broker from Brooklyn, to 2019, when his indictment in New York for alleged sex-trafficking of children made him notorious worldwide.
The documents reveal Epstein’s penchant for reporting lost passports and his intentions to travel to far-flung destinations, including several countries — Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, and Senegal — that have not appeared in other accounts of Epstein’s travel.
The earliest application is from April 1983 when Epstein sought to replace a lost passport in time for an upcoming trip to London. In barely legible handwriting, then 30-year-old Epstein lists his occupation as “banker” and his address as an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The stapled color photograph depicts Epstein, who in later years favored loose-fitting track suits, in a crisp black suit and glossy tie.
In the mid-1980s, Epstein was a college dropout who taught math at an exclusive Manhattan private school and later worked for five years as a self-described “financial strategist” on Wall Street. After an abrupt exit from Bear Stearns, he claimed to have launched a career as a self-employed investment adviser for the uber-rich.
Epstein twice more in the 1980s reported his U.S. passport lost or stolen; once left behind in a London black taxi, and once stolen “out of [his] jacket pocket” as he dined at a restaurant, according to his explanations in the files.
In an application for a replacement on Feb. 26, 1985, Epstein reported he was then residing in London. The address he provided, which has not previously been associated with Epstein, is in an area surrounded by foreign embassies.
In his affidavit of loss, Epstein indicated he had a flight booked the next day to Sweden. Less than a week later, former Miss Sweden Eva Andersson was the host of a televised musical contest in the country. Video of the event, unearthed by YouTube user “Green Clown2021,” shows Epstein in the audience, clapping half-heartedly between musical acts. Andersson would later testify, in Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal trial in 2021, that she and Epstein dated on and off in the 1980’s.
Epstein’s 1993 passport application shows his hair graying and his fortunes improving. His listed address on East 69th in New York…
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