A French fashion agent linked to Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his prison cell on Friday night, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
Jean-Luc Brunel, 76, was in detention awaiting a trial on charges of rape of a minor and sexual harassment.
He was suspected of being involved in a global paedophile ring organised by the late disgraced financier Epstein, who took his own life in prison while awaiting trial for sex crimes, in 2019.
US prosecutors accused Brunel of finding young girls for his longtime associate and financier.
Lawyers for the fashion agent suggested he had killed himself, according to reports in the French press.
Le Monde reported his legal team as saying: “His decision was not driven by guilt, but by a deep sense of injustice.”
Brunel was arrested in December 2020 at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport while trying to board a plane to Senegal.
He co-founded modelling agency MC2 Model Management in the US with funding from Epstein.