A British whistleblower reveals Lutnick's business ties to Epstein

Simon Andriesz, former managing director of a Wall Street firm, claims to have found in Epstein's files direct exchanges between the pedophile financier and Howard Lutnick, current US Secretary of Commerce, regarding an undeclared joint investment.

From a coastal village in Cornwall, 57-year-old Simon Andriesz sifted through 3,5 million pages of declassified documents. A former managing director at BGC Partners, a subsidiary of the Cantor Fitzgerald group headed by Howard Lutnick, he searched the Epstein files released by the US government over the past year and found his own name there.

The documents in question corresponded to statements he made to the FBI between 2020 and 2021, after Jeffrey Epstein's suicide in prison. Andriesz had then mentioned what he described as undisclosed business ties between Lutnick and the financier convicted of prostitution-related offenses, including one involving a minor.

His research method proved decisive. Where other researchers typed "Lutnick" into databases, Andriesz knew that Cantor Fitzgerald executives used their initials in internal emails. By searching "HWL," for Howard William Lutnick, he uncovered a 2018 correspondence between Lutnick and Epstein about a digital advertising company called Adfin, in which both men had invested.

In this exchange, Epstein directly asked the HWL account: "What do you think of Adfin's prospects?" Lutnick replied: "They are finally generating revenue. This is their year. In the next twelve months, they need to become financially self-sufficient."

Andriesz passed this information on to members of the House Oversight Committee, the principal investigative body of the U.S. Congress. Lutnick agreed to appear before the committee for a closed-door hearing in May. He told lawmakers that he only learned this year that Epstein was a co-investor in Adfin, claiming to have met him only once, 20 years earlier, when they were neighbors in Manhattan. The committee's 21 Democrats signed a letter calling for his resignation, accusing him of lying.

The U.S. Commerce Department rejected the allegations, calling them a "desperate partisan distraction" and stating that there was "no evidence of wrongdoing or legitimate cause for concern." The White House, for its part, called the revelations "a pathetic and desperate attempt to smear Secretary Lutnick."

Lutnick's presence on Epstein's Caribbean island, Little St. James, in December 2012 had already contradicted his version of a one-off encounter. A photo extracted from the files shows him alongside the financier, four years after the latter had served a prison sentence in Florida.

Andriesz also uncovered, in the same files, a 2013 draft agreement in which Cantor Fitzgerald considered lending £1 million to a company controlled by Prince Andrew in exchange for exclusivity: the former UK trade envoy would only be allowed to introduce his wealthy contacts and connections with sovereign institutions to Cantor Fitzgerald. "What this was all about was buying a prince," Andriesz summarized. Discussions between advisors for both parties reportedly lasted four months, from August to November 2013, without reaching an agreement. Epstein himself had warned the prince's aide, David Stern, about the overly restrictive terms of the deal. Cantor Fitzgerald did not deny that these negotiations took place, but clarified that he ultimately did not do business with the former prince. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor did not respond to requests for comment.

Andriesz began raising internal concerns as early as 2016, reporting accounting irregularities at BGC Partners. Dismissed in 2017, some of his accusations led to a $3 million fine levied against BGC by the U.S. derivatives regulator for "numerous violations of supervision, reporting, and record-keeping." BGC disputes the credibility of his claims and maintains that the relevant authorities have not substantiated them. The company argues that he was fired after refusing medical advice and abandoning his position.

Despite receiving $420,000 in compensation from the U.S. regulator for his whistleblowing role, Andriesz says he has suffered lasting consequences for his career, health, and finances. "I expose Howard Lutnick's financial ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and nobody seems to care," he laments.