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The Epstein Saga: Chapter 4, Good Old Robert

By Lorenzo Maria Pacini | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 30, 2025

Epstein’s connections with British and Israeli intelligence were facilitated by a key figure known as Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine, Jeffrey’s wife.

Robert Maxwell was one of the most controversial media moguls of the 20th century: a Holocaust survivor who enlisted in the British army, he became a publishing tycoon, a Labour MP, and a figure at the center of financial scandals and alleged links to various secret services, including MI6 and Mossad. His biography intertwines his very poor origins, his meteoric rise, his relationships with heads of state, and, after his death at sea in 1991, the discovery of enormous fraud involving his companies’ pension funds.

Born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch in 1923 in Slatinské Doly (now Solotvyno, Ukraine), then Czechoslovakia, into an Orthodox Yiddish-speaking Jewish family, he emigrated to Great Britain during World War II and fought in the British army.

After the war, he entered scientific publishing and founded Pergamon Press, transforming it into a major publisher of technical and academic texts, the basis of his future media empire.

By the 1980s, he controlled a vast empire: Maxwell Communication Corp, Pergamon, Macmillan, the Daily Mirror tabloid, and other publications in the UK and abroad, in direct competition with Rupert Murdoch.

He died on November 5, 1991, after falling from his yacht Lady Ghislaine off the coast of the Canary Islands. After his death, it emerged that he had diverted hundreds of millions of pounds from the Mirror Group’s pension funds to cover financial shortfalls.

So… He sold textbooks to American schools. He rubbed shoulders with kings, queens, presidents, and popes. And, away from the spotlight, he may have contributed to the activities of one of the world’s most secretive intelligence agencies, engaged in surveilling half the planet. To some, he was a brilliant innovator; to others, an unscrupulous impostor.

For his daughter Ghislaine—whose later life would become intertwined with that of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein—he was the man who opened the doors to high society and perhaps, unwittingly, to future ruin. Maxwell rose to the top to become a powerful media entrepreneur in the UK, building an empire comparable to that of Rupert Murdoch.

When he founded Pergamon Press, an academic publishing house specializing in history and science textbooks distributed in US schools, often criticized for a pro-Israel stance consistent with Maxwell’s strong Zionism, his competitors would not have expected such success.

In 1984, he bought the Daily Mirror, transforming it into a giant of popular journalism. At the height of his expansion, he controlled Maxwell Communication Corporation, Macmillan, Pergamon, and numerous international newspapers. Ghislaine, his favorite daughter, was educated at Oxford, prepared for the salons of the elite, and often at his side at social events in London and New York. Maxwell was photographed in the company of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Princess Diana, Margaret Thatcher, and even Mother Teresa. Other images show him alongside US Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

Several sources indicate that the British Foreign Office suspected Maxwell of being a double or triple agent, with links to MI6, the Soviet KGB, and the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad… My source, whom I consulted while writing this text, confirms his membership in the British services, with a key role in relations with companies and other agencies, particularly with regard to activities involving politicians (American but not only).

Maxwell moved with ease between the White House, the Kremlin, Downing Street, and the political leaders of France, Germany, and Israel, something that is not at all easy, nor “comfortable” to maintain.

In the 1960s, he served two terms as a Labour MP for Buckingham, while leading an extremely luxurious lifestyle. At his residence in Headington Hill, near Oxford, he organized lavish parties which, according to persistent rumors, were used as seductive traps to gather compromising information on influential figures.

The most serious allegations link him to the PROMIS software scandal, which we discussed in Chapter 3 of our Saga.

Originally a program of the U.S. Department of Justice, PROMIS was allegedly stolen, modified with an Israeli “back door,” and then distributed to numerous intelligence agencies, armed forces, and companies around the world, allowing Israel to monitor virtually every country that used it. According to various whistleblowers, including former Israeli agent Ari Ben-Menashe, Robert Maxwell allegedly served as the main global promoter of this digital Trojan horse. These allegations are partly corroborated by circumstantial evidence: strong support for Israel, business in sensitive sectors, close ties to Israeli leadership, and a state funeral in Israel in 1991, attended by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, President Chaim Herzog, and senior intelligence officials, with public praise that Maxwell “did more for Israel than can be said.”

The last years of his life were marked by financial collapse. After his death, investigators discovered a £460 million hole in the Mirror Group’s pension fund. Maxwell had stolen his own employees’ pension savings to support an empire now submerged in debt. His sons Ian and Kevin Maxwell were arrested and charged with fraud (and later acquitted), while the British public exploded with anger at the betrayal of thousands of pensioners.

Overnight, Maxwell went from being a respected tycoon to a hated figure. Protesters renamed him “Robber Bob.”

On November 5, 1991, he disappeared from his 180-foot yacht off the Canary Islands. He was found dead a few hours later, face up in the ocean. The official version spoke of a heart attack followed by accidental drowning. His daughter, however, believed he had been murdered.

The autopsy revealed that Maxwell already suffered from serious heart and lung conditions.

He was given a state funeral in Israel, attended by then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and numerous intelligence officials.

Epstein met Ghislaine Maxwell in the 1990s, and their relationship began as a brief romantic affair before turning into a very intense professional and personal alliance. Ghislaine became Epstein’s chief assistant, managing his properties, organizing his staff, and playing a central role in recruiting victims for sexual abuse.

The ties with his father, Robert, were important from the outset, although perhaps even more so after his death: Epstein was introduced to Mr. Maxwell’s circle thanks to the family’s contacts and networks. A reconstruction reported by the Telegraph in 2022 claims that Epstein may have helped Robert Maxwell hide some of the money stolen from the Mirror Group’s pension funds using offshore channels.

Robert was instrumental in introducing Epstein to the world of Israeli intelligence, where he was also able to make his own way.

The source consulted, who comes from the world of intelligence, revealed to me that Ghislaine is also central to this story: following in her father’s footsteps, she made her way into British and Israeli intelligence, weaving relationships, cover stories, and favors for her beloved Jeffrey.

After all, what could be better than marrying the daughter of a “spy” with the guarantee of inheriting his “legacy”? Without Ghislaine, Epstein would not have had access to many of the VIPs with whom he established regular relationships, and above all, he would not have had the cover necessary to operate undisturbed for many years.

December 30, 2025 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Israel, UK, Zionism | Leave a comment