The longtime bodyguard of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein says he believes that his former boss recruited others into helping him die in an apparent jailhouse suicide, according to a new report.
“Somebody helped him to do that,” Igor Zinoviev — who served as Epstein’s bodyguard and sometimes-driver as the convicted pedophile crisscrossed the country to his various estates — told New York Magazine.
Zinoviev, a former UFC fighter, declined to elaborate on how Epstein allegedly carried out his hanging death Saturday at a Manhattan federal prison, saying, “Listen, you know, that’s going a little too deep.”
In an earlier unpublished interview, Zinoviev was more candid about the power the multimillionaire financier wielded.
“He has so much money he can pay it off,” Zinoviev told the reporter in 2015. “Me personally, if I caught him with my daughter or something do that — I’m not going to go to police. I do something else. Much worse. That guy could try to sue me and manipulate the situation with his money. That’s the American way.”
Zinoviev said he worked for Epstein for five or six years — often shuttling him from the Palm Beach jail where he served a 13-month sentence in 2008 and which he was allowed to leave for work release. – READ MORE