Released Jeffrey Epstein files expose how associate Jean-Luc Brunel used Czech and Slovak modelling agencies to recruit and traffic underage girls. Brunel leveraged his industry prestige to lure victims into Epstein’s network, often using professional contracts as legal cover. He ultimately died by suicide in a Paris prison in 2022.
Karolína Kiripolská
First published in Heroine and Denník N.
When the US Department of Justice published new parts of the files in the case of serial abuser and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein two months ago, his private conversations with various people also contained references to Czechia and Slovakia.
The documents showed that people from Epstein’s circle were seeking girls for sex here. What remained unclear was where they met them and how they gained their trust. The modus operandi of Epstein’s agents is only revealed in the testimonies of individual women or collaborators.
One such encounter was described by a Czech woman whom, for the sake of anonymity, we will call Andrea in this article. In 2003, she was approached at the Prague modelling competition Topmodel of the New Millennium by Jean-Luc Brunel, a long-time close associate of Epstein.
At the beginning of the new millennium, the agency Company Models used it to look for new faces aged 15 to 18 and promised them the launch of a successful modelling career.
“There were modelling agencies from New York, Paris, Milan. And Jean-Luc Brunel was there as well,” Andrea recalled the competition where Brunel tried to lure her to Paris for modelling work.
From 1978, he ran the leading Paris agency Karin Models and in 1989 he was behind the founding of Next Model Management. In New York, at the turn of the millennium, he then set up the agency MC2 Management. The fact that his last agency would become a direct link to Epstein’s bedroom was not yet known.
He met top model Simona Krainová in a bar and helped her at the start of her career
Andrea still remembers the moment when Jean-Luc Brunel approached her father with the offer that Paris was waiting for her. He came across as convincing and her father found him very likeable. “Jean-Luc was this older, charismatic gentleman. He was very kind, always smiling. A decent guy. Anyone would probably have fallen for anything he said,” she recalled.
Her father, however, refused to let her go to France without being accompanied by her parents. “And so nothing came of it.”
Neither Jochová nor the co-organiser of the competition, Nikoleta Schick, recall Brunel’s presence today. According to sources of Heroine and Denník N, however, he sat on the jury of this contest. This was not unusual; he appeared as a juror at several modelling events. One participant in an international discussion group for modelling scouts described meeting Brunel in Brussels in 1999. “We were on the jury together. He was a weirdo who carried a suitcase with thirty different pairs of sunglasses and was constantly snorting cocaine,” she wrote.
Several people we spoke to highlighted Brunel’s charisma, affability and sense of fun. They include Slovak modelling agent and photographer Nataša, who worked in New York for many years and now lives in France.
“I knew Jean-Luc. He was sweet. He came across as a typical Frenchman. He did not seem disgusting to me. But in my view he was always high,” said the Slovak, whom Brunel used to visit at home. At the time, Nataša held castings in her home studio in Prague. “Scouts from all over the world came to us and he was one of them. Jean-Luc came to us under the banner of the agencies Karin Models and MC2.”
Former Ford Models agency chief Joey Hunter viewed him similarly, telling Heroine and Denník N that Brunel was very charming. “I never saw that terrible side of him. When he was in my presence or in the presence of models at the agency, he was very charismatic and kind. I think most of the girls I represented did not have negative experiences with him,” the former colleague said.
When information then started to emerge about trafficking in women and sexual violence that Brunel and his friends committed against young women from all over the world, it provoked mixed reactions among professionals in the field, according to the Slovak Nataša.
“People in our global scouting group on Facebook could not believe what had been found out about him. They described him as a gentleman, an angel and a good boss who conscientiously looked after his models. His colleagues wrote that they had not noticed any inappropriate behaviour from him,” Nataša said, describing the reactions at the time.
At first glance, then, it was not apparent what the victims later described during the investigation of Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. “Epstein’s business partner Jean-Luc Brunel was my agent. He was a man who trafficked women internationally for forty years. He was a hundred times worse than Maxwell. She was bad and guilty, but compared with him she was nothing,” one of the victims stated, according to files released by the US Department of Justice.
Jean-Luc Brunel. Source: Epstein Library“He himself was a legitimate modelling agent whose personality was, unfortunately, both Jekyll and Hyde. On the one hand, he operated as a genuine agent, on the other he was a repulsive trafficker in women. In my view, he acted both for his own pleasure and very quickly also for the pleasure of his friends,” former New York Times editor and author of the bestseller Model Michael Gross said in an interview with Heroine and Denník N.
Brunel’s former colleague Hunter also said that, like most influential men in the modelling world, Brunel distinguished between successful models and those who merely dreamed of a successful career. “He did not drag a model who was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars into his shit. In that respect he focused more on girls who could not be models, even though they hoped to be,” Hunter said.
Brunel discovered women such as Christy Turlington and Sharon Stone, and Czech top model Simona Krainová also worked at his agency Karin Models. When she was 19, Brunel approached her in one of Prague’s bars. She started modelling nine months later. “Jean-Luc Brunel was among the people who helped me a lot at the beginning of my career,” Krainová said for Heroine and Denník N.
When we asked Krainová about Brunel’s connections with Epstein and his scandals linked to trafficking in women and sexual violence against models, she stressed that after their initial cooperation she had not been in contact with him for many years and had been unaware of his scandals.
“Yes, in the past I worked for the agency Madison Models and after a few years I moved to the agency Karin Models, where I was represented by head booker Ruth Malka and Helen Renaud, with whom I handled all work matters,” Krainová said. “I was never a witness to any inappropriate behaviour, nor did I experience anything like that, so I have nothing to add on this matter.”
Daniela Peštová also worked at Karin Models, but she did not respond to questions; as did Slovak national Naďa Marcinková, who is now a key witness in the Epstein investigation.
Simona Krainová. Source: Facebook Simona Krainová (official)Marcinková moved to Karin Models after leaving the agency that organised Topmodel of the New Millennium
The competition Topmodel of the New Millennium, at which Jean-Luc Brunel noticed the Czech Andrea, is also linked to the Slovak victim of Epstein, Naďa Marcinková. She had taken part in it three years earlier.
Lenka Jochová, then director of the Czech agency Company Models, which organised the competition, knew Marcinková well. “Naďa was my model. In 2000 she sent her photographs to Company Models. At that time she was sixteen. She entered our competition, which was then won by Hana Soukupová and Naďa Marcinková came second,” Jochová recalled.
Jochová described Marcinková from this period as intelligent, rather quiet and shy. She had a family background, and on her trips to Prague she was accompanied by her father.
“While I was running the agency she travelled to Milan and flew to Japan. But we always combined it with school, which was her priority. Then in 2003 I left Company Models and set up my own agency, Glamour, where several models moved with me. I did not choose Naďa. And that was also because I knew modelling was not her priority. She was not ambitious. It seemed to me she did not have the temperament for it,” Jochová said.
After Jochová left, Marcinková moved to the Paris agency Karin Models. “Karin was working very well even at the time when Brunel was there,” Jochová said. According to sources of Heroine and Denník N, Marcinková eventually settled in Brunel’s New York agency MC2, which was linked to Jeffrey Epstein.
It was at that time that Lenka Jochová learned that Marcinková had changed significantly. She was bolder, moved around at parties and in the company of wealthy men. “That is not how I remember her. I know her as a clever, shy girl.”
Brunel’s agency was a direct link to Epstein’s bedroom
When modelling expert Joey Hunter decided to leave the agency Ford Models in 2002, Jean-Luc Brunel offered him cooperation on opening the New York branch of Karin Models. At first, it was standard business.
