A British man has told the BBC how he discovered evidence that his former employer, now US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, failed to disclose a business relationship with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. Simon Andriesz, previously a managing director at a Wall Street firm, found an email chain from 2018 in which Lutnick and Epstein discussed the prospects of a start-up they were both involved in. The discovery came from millions of Epstein files released by the US government in the past year. Andriesz shared his findings with US politicians on the House Oversight Committee ahead of Lutnick’s appearance there in May. Lutnick told the committee he had only learned this year that Epstein was an investor in the firm. The US Commerce Department said on his behalf there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
Andriesz also found in the files that one of Lutnick’s firms had planned in 2013 to go into business with Prince Andrew, another figure linked to Epstein, by commercially exploiting contacts the former UK trade envoy had made. “What it involved was a loan to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of £1m… to basically buy a prince,” Andriesz told File on 4 Investigates. He said he was “completely shocked” when he discovered his own name in the Epstein files – a collection of documents, photos, video and emails relating to the notorious sex offender.
“British whistleblower Simon Andriesz reveals evidence that US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick concealed business ties with Jeffrey Epstein.”
The files where Andriesz appeared related to interviews he gave to the FBI while in dispute with his former employer, BGC Partners, part of Lutnick’s Cantor Fitzgerald group. In 2016, Andriesz raised internal concerns about accounting irregularities. He was sacked in 2017, but some of his allegations later led to BGC being ordered to pay a $3m penalty by the US derivatives regulator for “numerous supervision, reporting, and record-keeping violations”. BGC told the BBC that Andriesz’s allegations lacked credibility and were “categorically false”, adding that authorities in several jurisdictions had not substantiated them.
Andriesz spoke to the FBI about BGC and Lutnick in 2020-21, after Epstein killed himself in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The Epstein files show Andriesz alleged that Lutnick had undeclared business ties with Epstein. The FBI did not investigate those accusations. Andriesz told the BBC he was disappointed that few had seemed interested in his findings – a silence that now, with Lutnick in one of the most powerful economic posts in the world, may be impossible to maintain.