Kevin Rudd isn’t in Epstein’s little black book…but Rupert Murdoch is.
As numerous news outlets have reported, US financier, sex offender and suspiciously dead person Jeffrey Epstein donated $US650,000, to the International Peace Institute between 2011 to 2019, a revelation the think-tank’s chair Kevin Rudd says is “deeply disturbing”.
Per AAP, “The former Australian prime minister, who became vice-chair of the UN-affiliated organisation in 2014 and chair in 2018, has convened an extraordinary board meeting after reports IPI president Terje Rod-Larsen borrowed $US130,000 from convicted paedophile Epstein in 2013.”
“I first learned of contributions from Epstein’s foundations to the IPI in November 2019 through reporting by the Norwegian press. I was blindsided by this,” Mr Rudd said.
“These revelations were deeply disturbing to me and to other members of the board. IPI’s work includes combating human trafficking and sexual violence.”
Mr Rudd said the links between Norwegian diplomat Mr Rod-Larsen and Epstein were also concerning.
“As a consequence of this latest development, I took action last week to convene an extraordinary board meeting and requested that Mr Rod-Larsen provide a report to the board on all these matters,” Mr Rudd said.
“I will be recommending to the board that an immediate and comprehensive probity review be conducted into the matters raised.”
Mr Rudd said he had been on a teleconference call with nine other people, including Epstein, in January 2014.
“Any significant engagement with someone as odious as Epstein must be taken seriously and investigated thoroughly. I have no recollection whatsoever of ever meeting Epstein,” Mr Rudd said.
There’s an interesting side-note to all of this. While I’m not saying this headline has arrived suddenly due to a war waged by Rudd against the head of a certain news empire, but allow me to steer your attention to Epstein’s infamous ‘little black book’, obtained by Gawker in 2015. Interestingly, Kevin Rudd’s name doesn’t appear in Epstein’s list of contacts…but guess who does.
The question, of course, is why is his name in the book? Especially when you consider the history between Murdoch, Epstein and his long-standing rivalry with Robert, the patriarch of the Maxwell family. As Andrew Clark of the Financial Review noted in 2019, soon after Epstein’s arrest, “An interesting aspect of the story has been its treatment by the Murdoch papers in the US, including The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, compared with The New York Times and the Daily News. Robert Maxwell was not only the owner of the New York Daily News for a short time, but his rivalry with Murdoch dates back more than 50 years to the contested takeover of the News of the World — nicknamed “News of the Screws” in the UK’s satirical fortnightly Private Eye — in 1968–69.
“It was a battle that Murdoch won, laying the basis for his global media empire. He later trounced Maxwell again in securing The Sun, and, yet again, when he won control of The Times and The Sunday Times in 1981. Maxwell later acquired the Daily Mirror and was fiercely determined to match it with Murdoch’s Sun, but he drowned in mysterious circumstances when he apparently fell off his cruise boat, the Lady Ghislaine — named after his daughter — near the Canary Islands in 1991.
“Just a few weeks later, reports appeared that he had illegally pillaged the Mirror’s £300 million pension fund to shore up a soaring corporate debt resulting from an ill-advised publishing investment. So if he had survived, Maxwell not only faced bankruptcy, but criminal charges.
“Intriguingly, super sleuth author John le Carre reported in his recently published autobiography that he had lunch with Murdoch not long after the Maxwell drowning. It was a brief affair, lasting less than half an hour.
“‘After a couple of banalities,’ le Carre reported, Murdoch blurted out: ‘Who killed Bob Maxwell?’ When le Carre said he didn’t know, Murdoch stood up and left.
“Put it down to coincidence if you like, but it was the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal that showed a clean pair of editorial heels to its competition, including The New York Times, with the Ghislaine Maxwell angle in the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal.
“In a detailed report published on July 12, the masthead — normally focused on stocks and bonds, and what the Fed is up to — ran an extraordinarily salacious story.
“Among its claims were that Ghislaine Maxwell, now 57, recruited young women to satisfy Epstein’s apparently insatiable sexual appetite. She has been accused by three women in affidavits and court filings of recruiting young women and training them for sex.”
Disappointingly, few are asking the question. So, what are ya doing in there, Rupe?
