Good morning, this is Paula. Among the millions of documents released earlier this year by US authorities on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in what critics say has been a selective process, references to Geneva include the story of a Russian victim, and how the millionaire traded off influence for access to young female ‘assistants’.
Our colleague at the Le Temps, Kylian Marcos, speaks with Sveltana Pozhidaeva, about how she was trafficked via Geneva, with the alleged support of the president of the International Peace Institute, and how her role here to help setting up a conference was just a façade to move her to where it best suited Epstein. |
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Svetlana Pozhidaeva wearing an IPI badge in front of UN headquarters in Geneva, in a photo provided by the US justice department.
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“I was promised a career in international diplomacy. In reality, it was just a façade,” Svetlana Pozhidaeva tells Le Temps. In 2012, the Russian woman, who was less than 30 years old, was more familiar with fashion runways than meetings at the United Nations.
A graduate of Russia’s elite Moscow State Institute of International Relations, which is run by the foreign ministry, she first came in touch with Jeffrey Epstein through modeling in 2008. Four years later, the American millionaire facilitated her access into the diplomatic world through the International Peace Institute (IPI), an independent think tank based between New York, Vienna, and Bahrain, promoting causes aligned with the UN.
After joining an IPI delegation to Kazakhstan in 2014, Pozhidaeva was hired as an intern to help organise a conference in Geneva on pandemic preparedness.
Read the full story on Geneva Solutions.
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