How US commerce secretary's Epstein links were uncovered by British whistleblower

A British man has told the BBC how he unearthed evidence indicating that his former employer, Howard Lutnick - now US commerce secretary - failed to disclose a business relationship with the paedophile financier, Jeffrey Epstein.

Simon Andriesz, previously a managing director at a Wall Street firm, discovered an email chain from 2018 in which Lutnick and Epstein had discussed the prospects of a start-up business they were both involved in.

Andriesz shared his findings - from the millions of released Epstein files - with US politicians on the influential House Oversight Committee, ahead of an appearance there by Lutnick in May.

Lutnick told the committee that, to the best of his knowledge, he had only learned this year that Epstein had been an investor in the firm. Speaking on his behalf, the US Commerce Department told us there was no evidence of wrongdoing.

Andriesz also discovered in the files that one of Lutnick's firms had made plans in 2013 to go into business with another figure linked to Epstein, the then-Prince Andrew, by commercially exploiting the contacts the former UK trade envoy had made.

"What it involved was a loan to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of £1m... to basically buy a prince," he tells File on 4 Investigates.

Searching 3.5 million documents

"I was completely shocked," says Andriesz, describing the moment when he discovered his own name in the Epstein files - a massive collection of documents, photos, video and emails relating to the notorious sex offender, released by the US government in the past year.

The specific files in which Andriesz appeared related to interviews he had given to the FBI while in dispute with his former employer, BGC Partners - a financial brokerage firm, part of Lutnick's Cantor Fitzgerald group.

In 2016, Andriesz had raised concerns internally about accounting irregularities at the firm. He was sacked in 2017, but some of his allegations later led to BGC being ordered to pay a $3m (£2.24m) penalty by the US derivatives regulator for "numerous supervision, reporting, and record-keeping violations".

BGC told us that Andriesz's allegations lacked credibility and were "categorically false". It said the claims had been investigated by authorities in several jurisdictions which, according to BGC, had not substantiated the allegations.

Andriesz spoke to the FBI about BGC, and about the firm's ultimate boss, Lutnick, in 2020-21 - after Epstein had killed himself in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The Epstein files show Andriesz alleged that Lutnick had had undeclared business ties with Epstein. The FBI did not investigate these accusations.

Andriesz tells the BBC he was disappointed that few had seemed interested in what he had discovered: "I'm exposing Howard Lutnick's relationship, financial links, with Jeffrey Epstein, and there's no interest."

In 2025, Lutnick was appointed US commerce secretary, at which point he sold his shares in Cantor Fitzgerald and passed control of the firm to his sons.

On a podcast later that year, he claimed he had only ever met Epstein once, 20 years earlier, when they had been neighbours in Manhattan, and that he had found his behaviour "gross".

However, with the Epstein files' release, inconsistencies began to appear in this version of events. A photo showed Lutnick with Epstein on the sex offender's Caribbean island, Little St James, in December 2012.

Four years earlier in Florida, Epstein had been sent to prison for two charges of soliciting prostitution - including one with a minor.

Andriesz suspected there was yet more to find in the Epstein files that could back up his claims - if only people knew where to look in the 3.5 million pages of documents.

"Everyone was searching 'Lutnick'," he says. He knew, though, that Cantor Fitzgerald executives preferred to use initials rather than full names in their emails.

Andriesz searched for "HWL" (Howard William Lutnick) and found emails sent to and from Epstein in 2018. Epstein had talked directly to Lutnick about a digital advertising company called Adfin, in which he and Lutnick's firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, had both invested.

Andriesz spotted correspondence, external where Epstein had directly asked the HWL account: "what do you think the prospects for adfin are?"

Lutnick responded: "Producing revenue finally. This is their year. Next 12 months they need to become economically self-sufficient."

Andriesz then shared this information with US politicians on the House Oversight Committee, the US Congress's main investigatory committee.