It seems Jeffrey Epstein might have missed an important lesson in his favored illegal activity: understanding the laws surrounding prostitution.

Had Epstein been aware, he might have avoided much of his legal trouble. While prostitution is prohibited across the United States, there are exceptions in parts of Nevada, where brothels are seen as a nod to the state’s 19th-century mining heritage and a form of ‘economic diversification’—a rather unconventional take on DEI.

Alternatively, he could have looked to Canada, where the legal landscape is somewhat different. There, selling sex is not outlawed, though the purchase of such services typically is.

Unfortunately for Epstein, these insights came too late. He appeared to prefer the convenience of arranging illicit encounters in his own spaces, whether it was his Palm Beach estate, his lavish New York residence, or the notorious Epstein Island.

The public remains insatiably curious about the Epstein debacle, particularly eager to learn about the wealthy and famous potentially involved in unsavory activities through his network. As the Justice Department releases millions of pages of documents, more names surface, often without protections for those who may be innocent.

Both my husband, Conrad Black, and I were acquainted with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell—his convicted accomplice now appealing her verdict. Our absence from the scandalous list may simply reflect our lack of noteworthy involvement.

But I can say this: Epstein networked efficiently and without fuss. ‘How did you meet him,’ I asked my husband who, at the time, was a newspaper proprietor in London as well as America, Canada and Australia. His answer gave me a small glimpse of how Epstein operated.

‘One of our company directors, Leslie Wexner [the billionaire owner of The Limited clothing brand and many associated companies, including Victoria’s Secret] asked me to lunch in London and Jeffrey was there when I arrived.’

Barbara Amiel with her husband Conrad Black, whom she married in 1992

Since both my husband, Conrad Black, and I were familiar with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the fact that our names have not been tossed around is testament to our lack of prominence, writes Barbara Amiel

At lunch’s end, Epstein gave my husband a card which read ‘Epstein Interests’. Things progressed naturally. Walking along Fifth Avenue later that month, my husband encountered Epstein with the lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Jeffrey introduced them. A swish lunch followed hosted by Epstein at Le Cirque, the nightmarishly expensive New York restaurant now closed. In Palm Beach, where we both had homes, Conrad encountered Epstein again.

Now Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend, came into play. I had met her in London in 1987 with her father, newspaper proprietor Robert Maxwell, and rather liked the gamine 26-year-old with the mobile face, the black leather jackets she favoured and her complete indifference to fashion. She seemed a blast of fresh air in a stuffy society world.

One heard stories about parties where female guests were told to remove their tops and blindfolded male guests would compete in identifying them through groping their upper anatomy. Ghastly if true, I thought. In Florida, we’d go for walks on the beach, she in white shorts and a T-shirt with taut legs that were over 20 years younger than mine. She had a seemingly bottomless curiosity that made me feel as if I was being summed up physically in that pitiless sunshine.

She liked rather odd conversational games: ‘How many bathrooms do you look after, counting the ones in the chopper?’ I never knew helicopters could have toilets mainly, I suppose, because unlike Epstein, we didn’t have one.

‘You must come to Jeffrey’s island,’ she would say. But thankfully neither my husband nor I were up for islands where you can’t easily exit.

I gave a small dinner party that included Jeffrey and a pre-presidency, pre-marriage Donald Trump and Melania Knauss. Together with Donald, Ghislaine was the life of the party.

‘Wonderful evening,’ Trump wrote in our guest book.

In New York, Ghislaine had a favour to ask. She wanted to be introduced to Leonard Lauder, the chairman of Lauder Cosmetics, whom I knew socially, and Henry Kravis – both billionaires. I was uneasy but she played the waif card after her father’s mysterious death at sea. ‘I’m alone,’ she explained ‘and I need business advice.’ I took her to the Lauders’ – and Ghislaine’s contacts now included one more billionaire.

Barbara met Ghislaine in London in 1987 and says ‘she seemed a blast of fresh air in a stuffy society world’

Ghislaine with her father Robert Maxwell, the media tycoon, and her mother Elisabeth

In the newly released Epstein files, the media has highlighted any email with a prominent name attached. In one particularly mad sequence – that sounded like a prelude to blackmail – Jeffrey wrote emails to himself about Bill Gates. He berated Gates for his ingratitude over antibiotics Epstein was supposed to have procured for the sexually transmitted disease Gates was supposed to have acquired from some ‘Russian girls’.

There’s no evidence the emails were ever sent or the STD existed. But these days, if you have a well-known name and ever sent Epstein so much as a Christmas card, subpoenas from some Congressional Committee will arrive. And so the names roll out: the former Prince Andrew, Elon Musk, Bill Clinton, financier Leon Black, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Barclays Bank boss Jes Staley and prominent people such as magician David Copperfield and Woody Allen. All in touch with Epstein – perhaps. The list seems endless. The only protection is to be dead like Michael Jackson.

And now come questions and assumptions. In an age where we wait for the first cash trillionaire, does this linkage of the super affluent with a convicted paedophile and sex trafficker reveal some awful truths about the super monied and famous? Is this the entitled bad behaviour of the 21st Century’s highest net worth class? I don’t think so.

There are thousands of billionaires, even centibillionaires, leading lives that never hit media’s yellow pages. The most recent Forbes list counts 3,028 worldwide billionaires but you can’t find out the net worth of people if they don’t want to reveal it. We don’t know who or how many, unless they’re a media magnate such as Rupert Murdoch. That’s what off-shore accounts, holding companies and the right of people to invest discreetly are about.

Additionally, hypersexual or off-centre sexual appetites are hardly exclusive to the ultra rich: think of the 1970s swingers’ parties in the suburbs with house keys thrown into a pot. Think of theme nights in London clubs where you might get the wrong evening and arrive at a rubber fest instead of the same-sex frolic desired.

American swingers’ club Plato’s Retreat did smashing business for affordable fees and a number of sexual tastes from 1977 to 1985. In Paris, ‘libertine’ clubs ranging from affordable to very expensive are making a comeback. Humans of every class have always contained groups that indulge voraciously, regardless of income. There’s a streak of the baboon in us all as well as the monogamy of the stork.

The Me-Too movement has been a mixed blessing. Holding sexual predators accountable and giving victims support makes sense, especially when the predator has extraordinary wealth and power, like Epstein, and the victimised come from childhoods of extraordinary deprivation.

His victims sometimes describe their experiences as ‘sexual slavery’, which does have a slightly jarring ring when the slavery includes rides on Bombardier Global planes. But Epstein’s young prey were not party girls or experienced women. Being trafficked on custom jets after life on the streets or in drug-addicted families is intimidating when menaced by wealthy men passing them around at Jeffrey’s behest.

Donald and Melania Trump with Epstein and Maxwell in 2000 at Mar-a-Lago

On the other hand, the Me-Too movement has made men, especially ultra-wealthy or high-profile ones such as Kevin Spacey, vulnerable to false accusations and even blackmail not completely unlike the situation facing homosexuals in the UK before the recommendations of the 1957 Wolfenden Report were finally put into law a decade later.

Whether or not the exploitation of women, or more importantly minors, has been influenced by the growth of the billionaire class as well as the more plentiful centimillionaires seems unlikely. Minors have been sexually exploited over the centuries by all classes, rich and poor alike. Different cultures have co-existed with, or even endorsed, pre-pubescent sex.

At different times in history, promiscuity and sexual gymnastics have not only been admired by society but institutionalised at the highest and richest level. The 17th Century court of France’s Henry IV boasted the official post of King’s Mistress (‘Maitresse-en-titre’) plus minor mistress jobs.

In the end, the riddles of power, money and sexuality barely change. Today’s high-profile billionaires and millionaires don’t necessarily have more divorces or partners and girlfriends than the rest of us. About the only difference besides the sky-high one of income is probably their levels of talent and of drive.

Their lives seem unbalanced somehow, with eccentric habits and bizarre patterns of sleep and work. Whether or not high testosterone levels are also inevitable is a matter of supposition but they all seem to share singular concentration, a determination to protect their wealth – and truly massive egos and competitive streaks.

A droll Lynn Forester, before becoming Lady de Rothschild, told of entertaining guests with Evelyn de Rothschild at Martha’s Vineyard – a coveted and expensive community just south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The first ‘name’ to arrive at her gathering was Prime Minister Tony Blair’s adviser, Peter Mandelson, whose brains and drive all but created New Labour. Mandelson held court among the less notable guests present, that is until Andrew, then Duke of York arrived.

Never one to fade into the background, Andrew took the party over. Matters were going rather well for him as American guests gawked at a real British royal. His time in the sun was short-lived: President Clinton arrived by boat surrounded by a flotilla of Secret Service men. No contest. What must intrigue Lady de Rothschild now is that all three men in this anecdote of decades ago came a cropper on precisely the same rock – Epstein – though with very different degrees of damage.

Whatever Epstein was, the one quality that can’t be denied is his financial clout: in 2009, on hearing from then UK business secretary Peter Mandelson, that some new banker’s tax – not to Epstein’s liking – was in the offing, Epstein phoned JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to tell him (at Mandelson’s suggestion) to call Chancellor Alis-tair Darling and ‘mildly threaten’ him over the proposed tax.

Never mind the fundamental wrong of a British Cabinet minister leaking information to an American financier and coaching him on how to sink the proposed legislation, what astonishes me is Epstein’s standing to place a call to Dimon, one of the two or three greatest bankers in the world.

Dimon, it should be said, had no relationship with Epstein, had never met him, but apparently Epstein’s worth as a client of JP Morgan and his renown in the financial world was sufficiently high that he could make this contact. In the world of finance, at least, Epstein was no imposter.

But so long as the age-old enjoyment of people seeing celebs and high achievers toppled and politicians use muck to further their careers goes on, Epstein’s ‘lists’ of names will continue to excite huge attention on social media and in the Press.

In some terrible way, this is Epstein’s final act of evil from beyond the grave.