WARSAW, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Poland will launch an investigation into possible links between the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Russian intelligence, as well as any impact on Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday.
The U.S. Justice Department's recent release of millions of internal documents related to Epstein has revealed the late financier and sex offender's ties to many prominent people in politics, finance, academia and business - both before and after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to prostitution charges.
Tusk told a government meeting that authorities would establish a team to investigate any potential fallout in Poland from Epstein's crimes, in particular in relation to what he said was possible involvement by Russian secret services.
Russia's foreign ministry did not immediately reply to a written request for comment on Tusk's allegations. The Russian Embassy in Warsaw also did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
"More and more leads, more and more information, and more and more commentary in the global press all relate to the suspicion that this unprecedented paedophilia scandal was co-organised by Russian intelligence services," Tusk said.
"I don't need to tell you how serious the increasingly likely possibility that Russian intelligence services co-organised this operation is for the security of the Polish state. This can only mean that they also possess compromising materials against many leaders still active today."
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in December that the Epstein files showed the hypocrisy of Western elites.
“Here, as I understood, were all the Western ‘lecturers on life’ who looked down on Russia and who lectured us about ‘democracy and human rights’ in interesting poses with equally interesting leisure partners,” she said on Telegram.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz, Marek Strzelecki, Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Alex Richardson)
