Jeffrey Epstein helped launch the fledgling investment career of high-powered British fixer Ian Osborne, after he had offered to orchestrate efforts to cleanse the paedophile’s public reputation in the wake of his conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
Documents released by the US Department of Justice show that Epstein helped Ian Osborne establish Hedosophia, one of London’s most secretive technology funds that has backed US companies Uber and Spotify, as well as fintechs including Wise and Ant Group.
The emails show Epstein later invested in wearable tech company Jawbone alongside Osborne’s investment firm.
Osborne, 42, has long cultivated an air of mystery. Despite rarely speaking to the media, the former pupil of the elite St Paul’s School in London, is a renowned power broker behind the scenes.
He has advised everybody from former prime minister David Cameron, to billionaires including Travis Kalanick and Mark Zuckerberg, and hosts an annual “mini Davos” for the titans of tech at his luxury chalet in Val-d’Isère.
There has long been intrigue in tech circles over how a one-time PR man managed to establish one of London’s most influential venture capital firms while still in his twenties.
People close to Osborne say the connections he made with up-and-coming tech bros in PR served him well when he turned to investing in the industry.
But emails and documents released by the US Department of Justice a week ago show that at that time Osborne also relied on the advice of a much older associate.
Epstein counselled Osborne on how to structure Hedosophia and where it should first invest, years after he was convicted in 2008. He also invested alongside Hedosophia, with emails describing an “affiliation” with one of Epstein’s own funds, Mort.
People close to Osborne conceded that there were discussions about Epstein investing in Hedosophia — which according to a person familiar with the matter is now a $1bn fund — but said this did not come to pass.
Osborne’s relationship with Epstein appears to have started around 2011, when the then PR man offered to help rebuild the financier’s image after his imprisonment.
In June of that year, Osborne Partners, his PR firm, penned a three-page pitch that advised Epstein to steer clear of the then Prince Andrew and his former wife Sarah Ferguson, due to the interest of the British tabloid press.
It also claimed Osborne Partners could “clean up” search engine results on Epstein’s name, saying they had utilised an “excellent team of Israeli experts” for other clients.
Separate documents released by the DoJ show Epstein appointed Osborne as a vice-president of Mort, an investment vehicle he controlled. That gave Osborne the right to sign off on potential deals related to Jawbone, a pioneer in fitness trackers, which Hedosophia was also investing in.
The DoJ emails indicate that Epstein acted as a guiding hand for Osborne as he attempted to get his fund off the ground.
The disgraced financier, born in 1953, originally wanted to call Hedosophia “Partnership 53”, but was overruled by Osborne and his co-founder Jacob Burda, scion of the billionaire German publishing family.
In one email from January 2012, Epstein said that he was waiting for the “investment papers” for “Partnership 53”.
The disgraced financier wrote that he did not care about the fund’s name. “There are many things to think about,” Epstein wrote. “Names are not one of them.”
Epstein would go on to review drafts of Hedosophia’s investment letters, deriding them as “sloppy” and asking for numerous changes to clarify points about how the fund would manage its clients’ money.
Osborne appeared to have listened. Later in January 2012, he emailed Epstein to say they had “completely redone the documents based on our conversation last Monday night”. People close to Osborne say that he sought advice from a dozen people when setting up Hedosophia.
In another email, in March 2012, Osborne described spending “weeks” in discussions with Epstein alongside potential initial investors including the Burda family, the billionaire Kuok family from Malaysia, and an adviser for the Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing.
He suggested that Epstein’s queries over the fund’s documents were partly responsible for the hold-up.
“The Kuoks and Jacob’s family don’t care — we just have to make sure it is OK with you,” Osborne wrote, while also pushing back against Epstein’s criticism that he had not invested in what the financier described as “the Brazilian deal”.
“We dropped the Brazilian deal on YOUR advice after you told me at the island not to waste effort on a $1.5 million investment,” Osborne wrote.
Osborne, who serves as a non-executive director on the board of advertising group Havas, told the FT that he could “unequivocally state that Jeffrey Epstein never invested in Hedosophia or any Hedosophia Fund”.
“The fact that I sought his [Epstein’s] opinion, along with many others, does not give him an advisory role, which conveys a misleading level of formality that simply did not exist,” Osborne said.
He added that his “association” with Epstein was one “I bitterly regret”.
“I never witnessed, nor was aware of, the repellent and illegal behaviour by him,” Osborne said. “It was a serious error of judgment, and one I bitterly regret. I am forever sorry for all the people who suffered by him.”
The business relationship between the pair appeared to grow closer in May 2012, when Epstein appointed Osborne as vice-president of Mort. Soon afterwards Hedosophia purchased $5mn worth of shares in AliphCom, which would later rebrand as Jawbone. A stock purchase agreement filing showed that Mort was lined up to purchase a further $5mn in June.
The company, an early manufacturer of Bluetooth headsets that was once valued at more than $3bn, went into liquidation in 2017.
Lawyers for Jawbone said in September 2012 that “given the affiliation between Mort, Hedosophia and Apoletto [another investor]” and their “aggregate share purchases” they would “treat all three of those investors as ‘Major Investors’”.
Osborne said the arrangement “does not mean that Hedosophia and Mort were affiliated”, saying it was “simply a construct that Jawbone’s counsel came up with” for ease, efficiency and to grant them ‘major investor’ status.
He added there was “no joint venture” between Hedosophia and Epstein’s investment vehicle.
www.ft.com
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