Alleged $1 M payment from Jeffrey Epstein to modeling mogul Jean‑Luc Brunel and links to MC2 agency

part-time jail, Epstein has become the focus of numerous civil lawsuits from his victims. He has so far settled a dozen. These same civil complaints allege that young girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, few of whom spoke English, were recruited for Esptein's sexual pleasure. According to a former bookkeeper, a number of the girls worked for MC2, the modeling agency owned by Jean Luc Brunel, a longtime acquaintance and frequent guest of Epstein's. Brunel, along with numerous young models, was a frequent passenger on Epstein's private jet, according to flight manifests. The agency owner also allegedly received $1 million from Epstein in 2005, when he founded MC2 with his partner, Jeffrey Fuller; although Fuller and Brunel denied any such payment from the billionaire pervert in 2007, when rumors started swirling, Samoff got confirmation from a former bookkeeper at the agency. Whether the money was a secret investment in MC2, or a payment for Brunel's services as a procurer, is unknown. Brunel also visited Epstein in jail. So who is Jean Luc Brunel? Although he did not respond to our interview request, we spoke to a number of people who have worked with his agency. While MC2 isn't considered a major industry player, it isn't exactly bottom-shelf, either: MC2 in New York most recently launched the career of Latvian editorial star Ginta Lapina (Brunel "discovered" Lapina via an MC2 scouting competition for young teens) and currently represents Vogue China covergirl Liu Dan. Worldwide, MC2 represents such stars as Sessilee Lopez in Miami, and top models Candace Swanepoel, Marina Lynchuk, Natalia Chabanenko, and Elisa Sednaoui in Tel Aviv. Brunel isn't involved with the business on a day-to-day basis, although he owns an 85% stake in MC2. Instead, "Right now he does scouting for [the] agency and takes care of the international relations with other agencies,” reports one source. Scouts scour the world for un-agented teenaged girls who could make it as models; they work largely unsupervised and are generally paid a headhunting fee for every girl an agency signs. Even when affiliated with an agency, as Brunel obviously is with MC2, scouts operate mostly independently and with little oversight — even relative to the almost totally unregulated modeling industry itself. "He travels a lot," says another person who has worked with Brunel. (The company blog refers to Brunel as a "scouting tsunami," and MC2 is fairly well-known for the strength of its international scouting.) Models we spoke to report mostly positive experiences with Brunel — one praised his sense of humor and said he is “lovely to all of his models," and another described him as highly intelligent and cultured, adding, "he knows a lot about the opera and he paints" — although it should be noted that none of the models whom we spoke to had been told of either his connections with Epstein, or his past. And what a past it is. These accounts from Michael Gross' 1995 book Model describe Brunel's activities in Paris from the late 1970s onwards, when he worked for, and eventually owned, the modeling agency Karins, now known as Karin Paris: “Jean-Luc is considered a danger," says Jér6me Bonnouvrier. "Owning Karins was a dream for a playboy. His problem is that he knows exactly what girls in trouble are looking for. He's always 30 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011941