A British man has told the BBC how he unearthed evidence pointing to undisclosed Howard Lutnick Epstein links. Simon Andriesz, a former managing director at a Wall Street firm, discovered the connection between his ex-employer, now US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Andriesz found a 2018 email chain in which Lutnick and Epstein discussed a start-up business both men had invested in. He shared his findings, drawn from millions of released Epstein files, with US politicians on the influential House Oversight Committee ahead of Lutnick’s appearance there in May.
Lutnick told the committee that, to the best of his knowledge, he only learned this year that Epstein had been an investor in the firm. The US Commerce Department, speaking on his behalf, said there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
Andriesz also found that one of Lutnick’s firms had planned in 2013 to go into business with another Epstein associate, the then Prince Andrew, by commercially exploiting the contacts the former UK trade envoy had built. He described the arrangement to File on 4 Investigates as involving a £1 million loan to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, essentially to “buy a prince.”
Searching 3.5 Million Documents
Andriesz says he was stunned to discover his own name in the Epstein files, a vast collection of documents, photos, video and emails released by the US government over the past year. The specific files referencing him related to interviews he gave the FBI during a dispute with his former employer, BGC Partners, a brokerage firm within Lutnick’s Cantor Fitzgerald group.
In 2016, Andriesz had raised internal concerns about accounting irregularities at the firm. He was sacked in 2017, though some of his allegations later led US derivatives regulators to fine BGC $3 million for supervision, reporting and record-keeping violations.
BGC told the BBC that Andriesz’s allegations lacked credibility and were categorically false, adding that authorities in several jurisdictions had investigated the claims without substantiating them.
Andriesz spoke to the FBI about BGC and Lutnick in 2020-21, after Epstein had died by suicide in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The files show Andriesz alleged Lutnick had undeclared business ties to Epstein, though the FBI did not investigate the claim. Andriesz told the BBC he was disappointed by the lack of interest in his findings.
Piecing Together the Howard Lutnick Epstein Connection
Lutnick was appointed US commerce secretary in 2025, at which point he sold his Cantor Fitzgerald shares and handed control of the firm to his sons. On a podcast later that year, he said he had met Epstein only once, roughly 20 years earlier, when the two were Manhattan neighbours, and described Epstein’s behaviour as “gross.”
But inconsistencies surfaced once the Epstein files were released. A photo showed Lutnick with Epstein on Epstein’s Caribbean island, Little St James, in December 2012, four years after Epstein had been imprisoned in Florida on prostitution-related charges involving a minor.
Andriesz suspected the files held more evidence, if he could find the right search terms among 3.5 million pages. While others searched for “Lutnick,” Andriesz knew Cantor Fitzgerald executives often used initials in emails. Searching “HWL,” for Howard William Lutnick, he found 2018 correspondence between Lutnick and Epstein about Adfin, a digital advertising company both men had invested in through Cantor Fitzgerald.
In one exchange, Epstein asked directly about Adfin’s prospects, and Lutnick replied that the company was finally producing revenue and needed to become self-sufficient within the next year.
Andriesz passed the correspondence to the House Oversight Committee, and Lutnick agreed to an off-camera hearing in May. He has not been accused of wrongdoing over his Epstein ties and told the committee he unequivocally condemned Epstein’s conduct and everyone who took part in it. He repeated his claim that he did not know until this year that Epstein had co-invested in Adfin.
Democrats on the committee accused him of lying, and all 21 signed a letter demanding his resignation. The US Commerce Department dismissed the allegations as a partisan distraction, saying Lutnick had answered hundreds of congressional questions and that no evidence of wrongdoing exists.
“To Buy a Prince”
Andriesz also uncovered Lutnick’s ties to two other Epstein associates: the then Prince Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson. Lutnick had been friends with Ferguson since the 1990s and attended Princess Eugenie’s 2018 wedding.
Files show that in 2013, Cantor Fitzgerald drew up a plan, in Andriesz’s words, “to buy a prince,” aiming to exploit Andrew’s contacts with wealthy individuals and sovereign institutions. Under the proposed deal, £1 million would be loaned to a firm controlled by the prince, which would in turn do business exclusively with Cantor Fitzgerald.
The files reveal Epstein warned the prince’s aide, David Stern, against the arrangement, partly over its exclusivity, since Andrew would have been barred from introducing wealthy clients to anyone but Cantor Fitzgerald. Advisers on both sides discussed the deal for four months, from August to November 2013, before it fell through.
Cantor Fitzgerald did not deny the talks took place but said it never went into business with the former prince. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his royal titles in November 2025, did not respond to a request for comment.
A World Away From Wall Street
Andriesz, now 57, lives in a quiet Cornish seaside village. He says the past decade of litigation has taken a serious toll on his career, finances and health. Despite winning a $420,000 whistleblower award from US regulators, he says authorities in the US and UK have failed to properly hold BGC and Cantor Fitzgerald accountable, or to protect him from retaliation.
BGC says it has strong whistleblower protection policies and denies retaliating against Andriesz, adding it has had no involvement with him since his departure beyond responding to litigation he initiated. The firm maintains Andriesz was dismissed after refusing to follow medical advice, declining essential job duties, rejecting reasonable accommodations, and ultimately abandoning his role.
Speaking on Lutnick’s behalf, the White House dismissed the BBC’s reporting as a “pathetic and desperate attempt to slander Secretary Lutnick,” saying it would not change his record as, in their view, the most consequential commerce secretary in modern history.
