A LETTER TO LEON BLACK

"Some Things That Will Need to Remain Unknown"

Dear Leon,

We know about Sergey Belyakov. He is an FSB academy graduate and former Russian Deputy Minister.

We know Jeffrey Epstein contacted Belyakov in connection with a woman later identified in Senate materials as Guzel Ganieva, who has been publicly linked to you. We know he then wrote to the chairman of Paul Weiss asking if she was still being surveilled, confirming her location, and directing that a Russian contact be used. We know he instructed your assistant to set up a private email account off the Apollo server so the correspondence wouldn’t run through company infrastructure.

Guzel Ganieva / Leon Black

We know he told you some of what he did would need to remain unknown.

We know you paid him approximately $170 million — a figure cited in recent Senate materials. We know your own settlement with the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands confirms that Epstein used money you paid him to fund his operations. We know you paid him at rates that far exceeded those of the elite advisors you already employed. We know more than $10 million was routed through a charitable structure designed to obscure your name and maximize your deductions.

We know Epstein wrote to you that there is “little I won’t do for you” and that he had already done things — “both known and some things that will need to remain unknown.”

That is not the language of a tax advisor.

We know your son is running the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation while you are under active Senate investigation led by Ron Wyden.

We know reporting has described intervention by Todd Blanche that limited cooperation from the DEA with that investigation. We know Scott Bessent has not produced the Suspicious Activity Reports requested by the Senate Finance Committee — records documenting thousands of transactions, including flows through Russian banking channels.

We know Senator Wyden has been asking for years.

We have questions about the Dechert investigation. Sixty thousand documents reviewed, including materials from Paul Weiss. No public accounting of the surveillance operation, the private email account, or the communications about things that needed to remain unknown. We have questions about what was in those 60,000 documents. We have questions about what wasn’t.

Sergey Belyakov

We have questions about what “unknown” means when intelligence-linked contacts are involved, when the locations of women are being tracked, and when vast sums of money move through financial systems tied to Russian institutions.

We also have questions about Jane Doe. A federal lawsuit filed in 2023 alleged that you raped a 16-year-old autistic girl at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in 2002. The law firm representing her later withdrew. The plaintiff continued on her own. No criminal charges were filed.

We know documents released by the Department of Justice include material described in reporting as a diary containing first-person accounts that align in time and place with those allegations.

We know additional released notes from plaintiff’s former counsel describe multiple abuse allegations connected to that same setting, even as reporting has acknowledged uncertainty about whether those accounts involve one victim or several.

We have questions about why multiple civil complaints have named you in connection with alleged assaults at Epstein’s townhouse.

We have questions about what else is in those files that hasn’t been released.

We have questions about a Justice Department that reviewed all of it and did not bring charges against uncharged third parties.

You deny everything. Your attorneys call the lawsuits frivolous. No criminal conviction exists.

We are not a court.

We are a publication that reads documents.

And the documents keep pointing at you.

The things that need to remain unknown have a way of becoming known anyway.

This is us, becoming aware.

Sincerely,
Closer to the Edge

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