Latvian law enforcement agencies need to study the materials related to the case of convicted American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in which Latvia is mentioned as one of the possible locations for recruiting underage girls. This was stated by the country's president Edgars Rinkevics in an interview on the program "Morning Panorama" of Latvian television, as reported by LETA.
According to the president, Latvian authorities should familiarize themselves with the published information and assess whether it requires any response. He noted that some of the mentioned events and correspondences are so old that they may already be subject to statutes of limitations.
According to Rinkevics, Latvia has not received any requests for legal assistance from the United States regarding this case at this time.
In any case, he emphasized, it is unacceptable for residents of Latvia to be involved in abuses.
As previously reported, at the end of January 2026, Latvia was mentioned in the published materials related to the Jeffrey Epstein case as one of the possible locations for recruiting underage girls, as reported by Latvian television.
Latvia's name appears in the documents more than 500 times, and Riga's name appears more than 800 times. The materials mention the names of several Latvian models and modeling agencies, as well as personal correspondences of Epstein with Latvian girls. It is presumed that some Latvians may have been his accomplices.
Latvia is first mentioned in 2001 when Epstein's assistant discussed an invitation to visit the country allegedly from the then Prime Minister. An anonymous sender of the letter wrote that he received a personal invitation from the Latvian Prime Minister to come to the country and "say hello." The letter also inquired whether fishing was possible in Latvia. In 2001, the Prime Minister was Andris Berzins.
Berzins denied in an interview with LTV that he invited Epstein and also told other media that he had never engaged in fishing, as mentioned in the letter.
According to LTV, most mentions of Latvia in the "Epstein files" date back to 2007. The documents name Latvian models and agencies, which may indicate that the agencies served as one of the communication channels between Epstein and Latvians. Among the records are copies of passports of Latvian girls, airline tickets from Riga and back, bookings in Riga hotels (most often at the "Grand Palace Hotel," which is mentioned 67 times), gifts, and personal correspondences.
One of Epstein's closest associates, modeling agency agent Jean-Luc Brunel, was part of the jury for the "Baltic Beauty" modeling contest organized by the "Natalie" agency, which included girls from the age of 14. In 2011, the program "de facto" reported that an investigation was underway regarding suspicions that Brunel may have supplied Epstein with underage girls. The then head of the "Natalie" agency, Eric Meisans, whose name also appears in the correspondence, denied any knowledge of this.
As previously reported, in January, the U.S. Department of Justice published at least three million pages of materials related to the Epstein case. More than 2,000 video recordings and 180,000 photographs were also made public.
Epstein was accused of sexually exploiting dozens of underage girls and trafficking. He committed suicide in a federal detention center in New York in August 2019, the day after documents were published shedding light on the scale of the sexual exploitation network he organized from 2002 to 2005.
Under pressure from Republicans, Donald Trump signed a law last November requiring the U.S. Department of Justice to release most materials related to Epstein within 30 days.
When the Department of Justice failed to do so by December 19, it reported that it had tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the documents and determining what needed to be redacted to protect the identities of the victims and not harm the ongoing investigation.
The volume of materials being reviewed increased to six million pages, including copies.
On the eve of Christmas, the Department of Justice released thousands of documents, including photographs, transcripts of interrogations, call logs, and other materials — many of which were already publicly available or had been redacted.
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