Jeffrey Epstein’s friend Jean-Luc Brunel ‘commits suicide’ in prison – video camera not on

The French modelling agent was accused of procuring more than 1,000 women and girls for the paedophile financier to sleep with. The 74-year-old’s apparent suicide happened in a part of a Paris prison where the security cameras were reportedly not working.

It echos the controversial circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death in a New York prison in August 2019.

US authorities later said that “technical errors” led to the CCTV footage of the convicted sex offender’s prison cell being lost.

Brunel died while awaiting trial in France for raping minors.

Prosecutors in Paris confirmed that Brunel was found hanging in his cell in La Santé in the early hours of this morning.

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Brunel had also been pictured alongside Epstein’s ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell who is currently in prison in the USA after being found guilty of sex trafficking.

In legal papers filed in America and France, Ms Giuffre claimed she had “sexual relations with Brunel on several occasions” between the ages of 16 and 19.

Brunel vehemently denied these claims.

Ms Giuffre also claimed that Epstein told her he had slept with “over 1,000 women that Brunel brought in” during an NBC Dateline special that aired in 2019.

Brunel always denied any wrongdoing and was being held in custody until a criminal trial on a date to be fixed.

The rape of a minor is punishable by up to 15 years in prison in France.

Meanwhile aggravated sexual harassment comes with a three-year prison sentence and a fine equivalent to around £40,000.

Accusations of sexual assault had dogged Brunel since the late 1980s.

A CBS documentary from 1988 examined allegations from models that Brunel drugged and sexually abused them.

Brunel denied the claims but the Ford Modeling Agency in NY severed ties with him after the report.

He faced more allegations in 2002 of sexual misconduct, but no criminal charges were filed at the time.