THE GIRLS, THE OLIGARCHS, AND THE ISLAND

Jeffrey Epstein didn’t build an empire alone. No man accrues that kind of power—access to presidents, princes, scientists, and CEOs—without partners. He had handlers. He had suppliers. He had logistics. The girls didn’t materialize out of thin air. They were sourced. Recruited. Delivered. And according to one former intelligence chief, some of them came straight from Kazakhstan.

Alnur Mussayev is not a conspiracy blogger. He’s the former head of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee—a man who knows how the sausage gets made in post-Soviet politics. And on August 12th, 2025, he accused three of Kazakhstan’s most powerful billionaires of being part of a Russian kompromat operation that funneled underage girls to Epstein’s island and to Mar-a-Lago. The goal wasn’t pleasure. It was leverage. Film it. Archive it. Use it later.

He names them. Tofik Arif. Alexander Mashkevich. Patokh Shodiev. Household names, if your house is a Kremlin compound or a Swiss tax shelter. These weren’t just Epstein’s drinking buddies. They were, according to Mussayev, FSB-connected bagmen helping build a blackmail system for Putin. Think less Eyes Wide Shut, more cold war meat market with velvet cushions and hidden cameras.

Tofik Arif’s name already appears in public court documents. He was arrested in 2010 aboard the Savarona—the former presidential yacht of Atatürk—where Turkish police found underage Eastern European girls, luxury liquor, and a guest list that reads like the casting call for a World Economic Forum sex scandal. The charges were dropped, naturally. But the photographs remain. Arif, grinning in a silk shirt. Girls everywhere. Smugness like a cologne.

Arif was also the founder of Bayrock Group, which operated out of Trump Tower and helped bankroll the Trump SoHo project. His business partner, Felix Sater, was a mob-linked felon turned FBI informant. Together, they built Trump’s real estate gateway to post-Soviet wealth—no questions asked, no origins traced. If Epstein needed access, if girls were moved through Mar-a-Lago, if there were parties that required no records—Arif was positioned to provide them.

And then there’s the girl.

Her name was Ruslana Korshunova. A model from Kazakhstan. In June 2006, she flew to Epstein’s island aboard his private jet. She was 18. Two years later, she fell from a Manhattan balcony in what authorities called a suicide. No note. No drugs. Just a body, a headline, and a memory scrubbed clean. She’s not the only woman from Kazakhstan linked to Epstein’s travel logs, but she’s the only one we can name. And even that feels like a risk.

Epstein, for all his power, was a middleman. That’s what Mussayev is saying. He wasn’t the spider—he was the web. He gathered the secrets, but the file belonged to someone else. According to Mussayev, that someone is Vladimir Putin. Not metaphorically. Literally. He says Putin holds the kompromat: documents, bank trails, agent testimony, audio, video. Sexual crimes against minors. Violence against women. A vault of American corruption, built offshore and weaponized by design.

This isn’t new. The KGB used sex as a weapon for decades. The FSB just updated the packaging. Yacht parties. Modeling agencies. Private jets. Girls as currency, influence as the product. Epstein’s gift wasn’t charm—it was obedience. He knew how to get what was needed and keep his mouth shut. Until, of course, someone shut it for him.

No one’s proven Mussayev right. Not yet. But no one’s disproven him either. And if he’s lying, he’s lying with specificity. With detail. With risk. You don’t name billionaires, accuse the FSB, and drag the President of the United States into a rape-and-blackmail scandal without expecting consequences. He says the recordings exist. He says the Russians have them. He says Trump is compromised and controlled. Not owned. Managed. Nudged. The kompromat doesn’t need to be aired. It just needs to be remembered.

So now the question is: who else remembers?

How many other billionaires flew girls in and flew silence out?

How much of Epstein’s network was actually an intelligence operation—funded by minerals, powered by abuse, and backed by post-Soviet money?

And what’s more disturbing—the possibility that Mussayev is wrong?

Or the possibility that he’s telling the truth, and no one gives a damn?

Closer to the Edge is still digging. If this story disappears, you’ll know why.

And if we disappear?

Same answer.

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If Epstein was the frontman, who built the stage? Who supplied the girls? Who held the cameras—and who still holds the footage? Former Kazakh intelligence chief Alnur Mussayev says the answers lead straight to Russian intelligence, billionaire traffickers, and Mar-a-Lago. This isn’t a scandal. It’s a system. Subscribe to Closer to the Edge and read what others won’t print.