Poland to investigate Epstein files for potential Polish victims

WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Polish authorities would analyze the recently published Jeffrey Epstein documents to seek any potential Polish victims.

"We cannot allow that any of the cases involving abuse of Polish children by the network of pedophiles and the organizer of this satanic circle, Mr. Epstein, be treated lightly," Tusk said, referring to the financier who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he sexually abused underage girls at his homes in the U.S.

His confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted of recruiting girls for Epstein to abuse.

U.S. authorities never charged Epstein with running a network of pedophiles and have said they were unable to find sufficient evidence to justify bringing a criminal case against anyone else in connection with the case.

Speaking after a government meeting on Tuesday, Tusk said the possibility that there were Polish victims meant that Polish authorities were responsible to look into the over 3 million pages of documents, videos and photos released last week by the U.S. Department of Justice.

While references to Poland appear in the newly released Epstein files, no links to prominent politicians or explicit cases of abuse concerning Poles have come to light so far.

In his intervention, Tusk mentioned information about individuals in Krakow, a city in southern Poland, who told Epstein they had a group of "women or girls" for him. "There are more such leads," Tusk claimed.

Tusk said a team would be set up to analyze the published documents, under the leadership of the minister of justice and the minister in charge of secret services. If necessary, a formal investigation would be initiated and Poland would request further documents from the U.S., he said.

The prime minister also said he also wanted an investigation into whether Epstein had any link to Russian secret services, although he did not present specific evidence why he worried that might be the case.

"So far there are over 1,000 documents among those published which directly concern Vladimir Putin," Tusk said, without giving details about the content of those documents.

Putin's name does appear in the records released by the Justice Department about 1,000 times, but the bulk of those references are news articles, or summaries of news stories, that have been shared by others and have nothing to do with the Epstein investigation.

Mentions of Putin also appear occasionally in Epstein's personal email correspondence, most commonly in the form of discussions about how his policies might impact world finance.

On Tuesday, Latvia and Lithuania both announced opening investigations into the Epstein files.

The Russian Embassy in Warsaw and the Russian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests to comment.