Last Friday, the North American Department of Justice released more than three million documents related to the pedophile, a volume so formidable that its contents are becoming known in dribs and drabs, as media investigations progress.
This Wednesday, for example, a headline was revealed that deepens the financier’s ties with Spain: in addition to the names of , and , we now know that he had an intense connection with the city of Barcelona. Daniel Siad had his headquarters there, his trusted man when looking for women in Spain, Morocco or Cuba. A Franco-Algerian who sent him messages like: “The girl is 20, but she looks younger.”
The documents suggest that Barcelona was one of the cities chosen by the businessman to recruit women for his sex parties. What is not clear is whether, also in our country, he abused minors or sought out young people under 18 years of age to be abused in some of his properties, as was demonstrated in the United States, crimes for which he did not pay because, while in prison.
Siad settled in Barcelona around 2016, coming from Paris. That year, he contacted Epstein via Skype to suggest that he send him a woman – whose identity is classified – to help him find girls in the city. “I have a nice apartment, I love to cook, so we would make a great team,” he stated in one of his first messages to the American, who was about to travel to the Catalan city just days before his arrest.
The messages
The files appear to contain a large number of emails exchanged with Siad, who appears to be in charge of this. “It is a great pleasure to be here. Barcelona is full of life, the people are very friendly. Spain is safer than Paris, especially Barcelona, which is full of tourists from all over,” says Siad in an email sent to Epstein.
The messages show a pattern when recruiting victims: Siad was in charge of finding the young women, hosting them for a time, sometimes even in his own home and, other times, in mini-apartments of 35 square meters, and sent many photos and videos to the pedophile so that he could assess their appearance. “She’s pretty, but her breasts are horrible. She’ll have to have them done again,” Epstein responds to one of the photographs.
“She is pretty, but her breasts are horrible. She will have to have them done again”
“She has been staying at my house for two weeks with her British friend of Jamaican origin, who is also very sweet. I am looking for the right agency for her, so I have been sleeping on my sofa since then,” Siad details of another of the victims.
There are messages that refer to financial payments and sexual demands from the financier. “Put the cell phone down between your legs,” Epstein demanded of a young woman to whom he had proposed a video call, one of those located by his agent.
One of the methods of recruiting the pedophile described in the files would consist of using the modeling agency business as a front to recruit women whom he would then restrict to fulfill his sexual desires. In fact, his finder was known for his contacts in the world of fashion and on his social networks he boasted of knowing figures such as the far-right politician, the businessman François-Henri Pinault (dedicated to luxury brands) or the banker Benjamin de Rothschild (his last name says it all).
Global harassment
Barcelona was not Siad’s only base of operations. For example, in December 2016 he traveled to Cuba to attend Fidel Castro’s funeral, and from there he wrote to Epstein to tell him that he wanted to open an agency in Havana, where he had found “new and beautiful girls.” After a few months, coinciding with Ramadan, he was in Marrakech, looking for more candidates for the tycoon.
In May 2009, years before settling in Barcelona, he wrote to Epstein from Poland to tell him that he had “some girls ready” and that he needed at least 4,000 euros. “Slovakia is the place to be, I already have a woman waiting for me to see more than 45 models in Kosce, then I will travel to Budapest,” he added in his message, showing that he exploited women all over the globe.
In July 2010, he was back in Spain, in Ibiza: “I’m with Tigrane, he wants to meet you. He’s with me in Ibiza with eight top girls. He says he would like to build something with you. Can you come to Ibiza? We have a huge house,” he wrote. Everything indicates that the meeting in the end did not take place.
Sometimes, the American tycoon rejected his offers “because they were not good” or gave him instructions on various options: “the 27-year-old,” he noted in another email. In his communications, Epstein is interested in the age of the women, while Siad assures him that they are pretty and look younger than their age: “Age?” “26, but he seems younger, 18, a very interesting person,” Siad tells him in September 2014 for a meeting in Paris.
