Ghislaine Maxwell’s bail denied

Ghislaine Maxwell will remain in custody until her trial next year

Credit: Patrick McMullan /Getty

Ghislaine Maxwell has had her second application for bail denied after a US judge ruled she remained a "flight risk" despite the British socialite pledging almost $30 million in bail.

The ruling means Ms Maxwell will likely remain in a New York jail until her trial next year on six charges relating to claims she helped Jeffrey Epstein recruit and groom underage girls for sex in the 1990s.

Lawyers for Ms Maxwell had offered a $28.5 million (£21m) bail package — one of the largest offered to a US court in history — in a bid to secure her release from prison before Christmas.

The proposal included home confinement with electronic monitoring and 24-hour guard to ensure she remained safe and would not escape.

Ms Maxwell’s husband, tech CEO Scott Borgerson, has offered to put up more than $22 million of the pledged assets, and wrote a letter to the judge calling Ms Maxwell a "wonderful and loving person".

Ms Maxwell’s siblings, including her brothers Kevin and Ian Maxwell, had agreed to post a further $5 million in bail guarantees. 

Ms Maxwell, who holds British and French citizenship, had also offered to waive her rights to oppose extradition from the UK or France as a condition of her bail.

The 59-year-old daughter of the disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell has been in a detention centre in Brooklyn since shortly after her arrest in July this year on charges of  recruiting and grooming girls as young as 14 years old for sex in the mid-1990s.

Prosecutors had strongly opposed the second bail attempt, arguing that Ms Maxwell’s considerable wealth demonstrated she could “absolutely afford” to flee.

The prosecution had further claimed that the socialite’s claims her marriage would keep her in the United States were undercut by the fact that she had revealed she was "in the process of divorcing her husband" at the time of her arrest in July.

Ms Maxwell’s lawyers rejected the claims, arguing that she had only discussed getting a divorce from her husband to “protect” him from the "terrible consequences" of being publicly linked to her.

However in a ruling on Monday, US District Judge Alison Nathan, who denied Maxwell’s initial bail application in July, said she "again concludes that no conditions of release can reasonably assure the defendant’s appearance at future proceedings."

Ms Maxwell has always denied the charges and has pleaded not guilty to helping Jeffrey Epstein recruit and groom underage girls for sex in the 1990s. Her trial is scheduled for July 2021.