Brunel, Epstein and Ukraine
And a look back to the 90’s and Trump
Brunel’s so called suicide coming a week before the Russian invasion of Ukraine did not draw as much attention as it should IMO
I bring it up now because most do not know Brunel and Epstein did business out of the Ukraine, and since Trump mania seems to be picking up steam again its time to look back at his associations in this area.
First lets look at some excerpts from Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_prostitution_in_Ukraine
The sexual exploitation of children is most obvious in Kyiv and some other big cities. Many children are forced to migrate there to get education and then they are getting involved into Ukrainian sex industry to support themselves. An involvement of Ukrainian adolescent boys into prostitution has risen a number of special concerns.
There is a consistent trend of human trafficking from the Ukraine, especially women and children. International Organization for Migration reports that the Ukraine became one of the major sources of minors and females for their forced sexual exploitation; as a rule they are sold to Balkans, Central Europe and Middle East.
An average price of Ukrainian girl is around $2,000 — $10,000 depending on her destination. In Israel a Ukrainian youngster may earn up to $50,000 — $100,000 annually for her pimp and have nothing left for herself.
According to the available statistics the number of Ukrainian children involved in prostitution is growing both domestically and abroad. UN Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography Juan Miguel Petit concluded that the human trafficking and commercial exploitation of children are major problems in the country.
You can see why the Epstein and Brunel’s of the world might be interested in Ukraine
Next some excerpts from the below link
Jean-Luc Brunel, was the French owner of two Epstein-financed modeling agencies, Karin Models and MC2 Model Management. The latter maintained offices in New York, Miami, and Tel Aviv. Brunel also helped establish two additional modeling agencies, The Identity Models in New York and 1 Mother Agency in Kyiv, Ukraine.
In 1989, Brunel and his brother, Arnaud Brunel, founded the Next Management Company modeling agency, a subsidiary of the Next Management Corporation, which was founded the previous year as a New York corporation.
The individual listed as the New York Department of State process or agent for the Next Management Corporation is none other than Steven Mnuchin, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Treasury.
Mnuchin, in typical Trump administration fashion, had denied knowing that he was the agent for the Brunel brothers’ company or even having ever met either of the Brunels.
However, WMR conducted a search of the New York Department of State (DOS) corporation filings and discovered Mnuchin listed as the DOS Process for not only Next Management Corporation but its follow-on identity, Next Time Corporation. Mnuchin cannot honestly claim he had no knowledge of a business relationship with the Brunels that spanned at least a decade.
The 115 East 57th Street Manhattan address listed by Mnuchin is two blocks from the Trump Tower at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue. Former Next Management models reported that they regularly witnessed young girls being the target of predatory men at dinner parties and clubs sponsored by the modeling agency.
It has been reported that Trump Model Management and Trump Management Group LLC, also known as T Management and T Models, Trump’s former modeling agency, maintained a working relationship with Brunel’s agencies, particularly the Miami office of MC2 Model Management.
Trump Model Management abruptly closed down after Trump’s inauguration as president.
Trump Model Management had represented Melania Knavs Trump, who Epstein claimed to have introduced to Trump in 1998 at a Fashion Week party at the Kit Kat Club in Times Square. The party was sponsored by Paolo Zampolli, the co-owner of Metropolitan Models.
Zampolli had been an associate of the late John Casablancas, the founder of Elite Model Management and the developer of the “supermodel” concept.
Casablancas’s agency had represented Ivanka Trump. Casablancas, who was a friend of Donald Trump and lived in Miami, died in 2013 at the age of 70, while in Rio de Janeiro.
Former Elite models alleged that the agency would send models, some between the ages of 13 and 16 to photo-shoots without a chaperone and with little more than a map and subway fare.
Other Casablancas models alleged to the Huffington Post that the late supermodel agent established a culture of compliance with sexually predatory behavior.
Casablancas’s obituary in The New York Times stated the following about the model mogul and friend of Trump: “Mr. Casablancas was frequently criticized for having sexual relationships with young models.
Zampolli served as Director of International Development in a joint venture with the Trump Organization. Zampolli currently holds diplomatic passports for Dominica and Grenada and is accredited by both countries to the United Nations.
Excerpts from the below link provide more detail about the Ukraine connection:
But while Brunel has dodged the press in recent years, he’s allegedly already sold MC2’s assets in New York and is currently in a deal to sell MC2 in Miami. The French agent also helped to create at least two new boutique modeling firms: The Identity Models in New York and 1 Mother Agency in Kyiv, Ukraine, former employees say.
Brunel has claimed MC2 lost business over his ties to Epstein. In 2015, he filed a lawsuit in Florida state court against the financier, claiming, “MC2 was worth millions of dollars; now, due to the illegal actions of Epstein, MC2 is almost worthless.”
Meanwhile, Marcia Gomez, a spokeswoman for The Source Models, said the agency is owned by Pedraza and Fuller, who was Brunel’s longtime business partner at MC2. Indeed, the contact email listed on The Source’s Instagram page is an Mc2models.comaddress.
“Mr. Brunel is not involved and has no connection whatsoever to this organization,” Gomez said in an email. “Additionally, MC2 Miami will be ceasing operations.”
Gomez said MC2 Miami’s assets will be sold to The Source Models. (Fuller and Pedraza did not return messages seeking comment.)
Asked why Fuller’s wife, Hilary Altman, is the registered agent for the Ukrainian agency 1 Mother in Florida corporation filings, Gomez said, “Recently, as an inducement for 1st right of refusal in the Miami modeling market, Jeff’s wife agreed to be the manager for the domestic company and be a liaison for this business.”
Reached by The Daily Beast, one model signed with 1 Mother said she believed Brunel was the owner of the agency and that she saw him at the Kyiv office last spring.
Another model who left 1 Mother told The Daily Beast that Brunel was the owner and that "he came a few times to Ukraine to visit all models.”
But Katya Talanova, CEO of the 1 Mother Agency, told The Daily Beast that she owns the firm—not Brunel. “We had been working with MC2 Miami for some time,” Talanova said in an email. “They had a first right of refusal because of loan that we had (that was covered long time ago).”
Vladimir Yudashkin, who says he co-founded 1 Mother with Brunel in 2014, said the agency was the Frenchman's brainchild. “Jean-Luc approached me and we started to work together,” Yudashkin told The Daily Beast.
“He wanted models who worked for 1 Mother to think that they are booked to MC2 to represent them in New York because MC2 is the best choice for them—not because MC2 is financially related to 1 Mother and 1 Mother has no other choice to work with MC2,” Yudashkin said.
In February, 2019 Ukranian model Natalia Kulakovskaya filed a lawsuit against 1 Mother and MC2, alleging that “Mother breached its fiduciary duty” by “forcing” her to work with MC2. The complaint, filed in Miami-Dade County, alleges “Mother and MC2 share common control and/or ownership” and that “it was self-serving and profitable for Mother to work with Mother’s affiliate.”
While we are at it, lets take a closer look at Trump, Casablanca and Epstein in the 80’’s and 90’s. From my rather long Trump timeline:
Excerpts from the link below
In 1991-On the Spirit of New York, a large private yacht , a party was in flow. Scores of teenage girls in evening dresses and miniskirts, some as young as 14, danced under disco lights surrounded by a crowd of older men surrounding them.
This was one of several events that Donald Trump, then 45, attended with a group of 58 aspiring young models that September. They had travelled from around the world to compete in Elite’s Look of the Year competition, an annual event that had been running since 1983 and was already credited with launching the careers of Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen and Stephanie Seymour.
At stake was a life-changing prize: a $150,000 contract with the world’s then leading modelling agency, Elite Model Management, run by John Casablancas.
Casablancas was sued by a former Look of the Year contestant. According to the lawsuit, when she was 15 and Casablancas was 46, at Look of the Year 1988 in Japan, Casablancas said he was “falling in love” with her. At the end of the competition, the lawsuit states, “contestants drank and partied late into the evening” and Casablancas told the teenager to come to his hotel room.
There, Casablancas sexually abused the girl “several times over the evening”. The abuse allegedly continued the following year; when the girl became pregnant, Casablancas told her “she would be having an abortion”. The abortion was allegedly “arranged and paid for” by Elite.
Trump was closely involved in Casablancas’s competition. In 1991, he was a headline sponsor, throwing open the Plaza, his lavish, chateau-style hotel overlooking Central Park, transforming it into the main venue and accommodating the young models. He was also one of its 10 judges.
One of the judges in 1991, Gèrald Marie, raped one of the contestants when she was 13
In 1992, Trump hosted the competition again. One of the girls on the boat was Shawna Lee, then a 14-year-old from a small town outside Toronto. She recalls how the contestants were encouraged to parade downstairs, one by one, and dance for Trump, Casablancas and others.
Another contestant, who was 15 at the time, also remembers being asked to walk for Trump, Casablancas and other men on the boat in September 1992. She says an organiser told her that if she refused, she would be excluded from the competition.
“I knew in my gut it wasn’t right,” she recalls. “This wasn’t being judged or part of the competition – it was for their entertainment.”
While Elite’s official brochure stated that contestants were aged between 14 and 24, all of those the Guardian has spoken to, competing in both years, were aged between 14 and 19.
Over the last six months, the Guardian has spoken to several dozen former Look of the Year contestants, as well as industry insiders, and obtained 12 hours of previously unseen, behind-the-scenes footage. The stories we have heard suggest that Casablancas, and some of the men in his orbit, used the contest to engage in sexual relationships with vulnerable young models.
No such allegations have been levelled against Trump, who at the time was dating Marla Maples, the woman who in 1993 became his second wife.
Trump married a former Look of the Year contestant: the current first lady, Melania Trump, allegedly had narrowly missed out on a trip to New York in 1992, after coming second in the Slovenian heat.
The Slovenian model’s life landed in New York in 1998 (allegedly at age 28 ) and would meet Donald and begin dating in 2000
Trump, Epstein and Casablancas all knew each other.
It also appears that Epstein had a Casablancas connection during the 1990s. According to a lawsuit filed in the US three months ago, in 1990 Casablancas sent a teenage model for her first “casting call” at a residential address on New York’s Upper East Side, to meet a “photographer” who, it turned out, was Epstein. The lawsuit states that Epstein ordered the 15-year-old girl to undress before taking photographs of her, pushing her against a wall and sexually assaulting her.
Trump and Casablancas were often seen together starting in the late 80s.
1996-Trump bought three beauty pageants—Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA—from ITT. As is often the case with Trump, the exact amount of the transaction is unclear. In The Art of the Comeback, he wrote that his winning bid was $10 million. But later, he couldn’t resist changing the narrative to make reporters think he had gotten a steal and paid only $2 million.
1997-Ivanka cohosts her Dads Miss Teen USA Contest
Four women who competed in the Trump-owned Miss Teen USA contest in 1997 came forward in 2016 alleging Donald Trump entered their dressing room while they were in various states of undress. Mariah Billado, former Miss Vermont Teen USA, remembers Trump saying something to the effect of, “Don’t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before.”
Billado says she told 15-year-old daughter Ivanka Trump, a co-host of the event, about her father, then 51, walking in. She says Ivanka replied, "Yeah, he does that."
The reigning Miss Universe, Brook Antoinette Mahealani Lee, recalls Trump asking her about the looks of his daughter Ivanka, who was co-hosting the pageant. “‘Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?'” Mahealani Lee recalls Trump saying.
1999-Trump teamed up with Tommaso Buti, to open Trump Modelling Agency, Buti was one of the Italian entrepreneur brothers behind the Fashion Cafe, a restaurant based in New York City featuring celebrity models, initially fronted by super models Naomi Campbell, Elle Macpherson, Claudia Schiffer, and Christy Turlington.
The Butis would later be charged with conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering and the New York Post reported that Tommaso fled for Italy shortly before his indictment, leaving his then-wife model Daniela Pestova behind.
Italian businessman Tommaso Buti is one of the 73 individuals granted a pardon by Donald Trump during his final hours in office.
Trump went on with opening the New York-based agency without Buti. Trump had previously been married to professional model Ivana Trump, and he was dating then model Melania Knauss, whom he would marry, but this was Trump's first step into the business side of the industry.
Trump Models would go on to represent more than 100 women, which, along with its main line of talent, includes a "development" line, which focuses on new talent, and a "legacy" line, which represents more experienced models. Trump Models' website says that the agency "is the brainstorm and vision of owner, Donald Trump."
https://ordoabchao.ca/volume-six/meetoo
Conclusion- its all rather creepy IMO. I guess you can excuse Trumps associations with US Mafia and Former Soviet Union Oligarchs due to the nature of his business in construction and real estate.
But his choices to enter into the Casino business, beauty pageants and modeling agencies , associations and /or friendships with the like of Epstein, Brunel and Casablancas , not to mention the multitude of accusations regarding his behavior simply cant be overlooked.