Ghislaine Maxwell’s former marine conservation charity was a ‘reputation cleanser’

The TerraMar Project didn’t pay out any grant money between 2013 and 2017 and seemed to exist more to divert attention from Maxwell’s association with Epstein, friends say

Ghislaine Maxwell saw super yachts as a sign of ‘status and freedom’

(US District Attorney’s Office)

In late 2011, Ghislaine Maxwell was about to turn 50 and, as she described it, was still looking for her “true calling”.

Having grown up holidaying on her late father Robert Maxwell’s superyacht the Lady Ghislaine, and being “mesmerised” by the deepsea explorer Jacque Cousteau, Ms Maxwell wrote about her lifelong affinity with the ocean.

“My love of the sea and adventure took me on an odyssey that eventually led me to ‘flying’ deep worker submersibles, remotely-operated underwater vehicles and helicopters, as well as becoming a certified emergency medical technician,” she wrote in a piece for the High50 wesbite.

In early 2012 she launched a marine conservation non-profit, The TerraMar Project which claimed to have the lofty goal of creating a “global ocean community to give a voice to the least protected, most ignored part of our planet – the high seas.”

Over the next three years Ms Maxwell was invited to give a TED Talk, speak at the United Nations twice and at the prestigious Washington DC thinktank, the Council on Foreign Relations.

However, tax filings show the TerraMar Project didn’t pay out a single dollar in grants between 2013 and 2017, ran up high overhead costs for a charity of its size, and produced no tangible examples of successful ocean conservancy projects.

The project was kept afloat with hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans from Ms Maxwell, public filings in the US and the United Kingdom show.

Ms Maxwell is on trial for child-sex-trafficking charges, and is spending her 60th birthday in jail as a jury decides her fate. She has denied all the charges.

Prosecutors said Epstein paid the socialite $30.7 million which funded her luxurious lifestyle in return for helping to procure and groom young girls for him to sexually abuse.

At the time Ms Maxwell launched the non-profit, her association with former boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein was coming under close scrutiny.

Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008, and Ms Maxwell was later named in civil lawsuits as having allegedly helped procure and groom girls for him.

Friends and associates of Ms Maxwell told The New York Times in 2019 that the charity appeared to be an attempt by the socialite to cleanse her reputation.

They noted that Ms Maxwell love for the ocean primarily came from having spent much of the late 1980s onboard her father’s sumptuously appointed 200-foot superyacht the Lady Ghislaine, which boasted a disco, jacuzzi, and spa.

The Lady Ghislaine super yacht

(PA)

Mr Maxwell mysteriously fell to his death from the yacht in 1991 – just before he was revealed to have stolen nearly $1billion from his employees’ pension funds.

While dating Epstein in the 1990s, Ms Maxwell sought to make use of his client Les Wexner’s superyacht, Limitless, its former captain Craig Tafoya told The Times.

“Ghislaine would always call me and say, ‘I’m coming down to use the boat with some friends. I would always tell her, ‘I have to call the owner. I can’t just let you on the boat.’ And she would never show up,” Mr Tafoya said.

Friends said Ms Maxwell saw superyachts as a symbol of “status and freedom”.

Ms Maxwell dated the founder of tech company Gateway, billionaire Ted Waitt, for several years in the 2000s.

She oversaw the purchase and renovation of Mr Waitt’s yacht, Plan B, and the couple regularly travelled around Europe on it.

Mr Waitt enjoyed close ties to Bill Clinton, donating $10 million to the William J Clinton Foundation and taking Ms Maxwell as his date to Chelsea Clinton’s wedding in 2010.

Mr Waitt’s philanthropic donations were “essential” to the TerraMar Project’s getting established, the Times reported.

The Clinton Global Initiative formed a “commitment to action” with Terramar around 2014, however there was little to show for the partnership.

Mr Waitt has formed his own marine conservancy organisation, the Waitt Foundation, which says it has invested over $70 million in various ocean conservation initiatives over the past nine years.

The Independent has sought comment from the Clinton Global Initiative and from Mr Waitt.

Ms Maxwell reportedly married Scott Borgenson in 2016, the former CEO of shipping data analytics company CargoMetrics.

Ghislaine Maxwell with her father Robert and mother Betty

(Steve Wood/Shutterstock)

Mr Borgenson was also involved in the TerraMar Project, attending a Council on Foreign Relations talk Ms Maxwell gave in 2014, according to The Times.

Reuters reported Ms Maxwell appeared at a press conference to promote Terramar at the United Nation with with Stuart Beck, the then-ambassador of Palau to the UN, in June 2013.

On February 4, 2014, she spoke at an event hosted by the Sustainable Oceans Alliance, the governments of Italy and Palau, and the Global Partnerships Forum.

A UN spokesman told Reuters that speaking “at” the UN was not the same as speaking “to” the UN.

After Epstein was charged with child sex trafficking in 2019, the FBI began investigating TerraMar for possible links to the paedophile, the New York Post reported.

Epstein died by suicide in jail while awaiting trial for sex trafficking in August 2019.

The charity was disbanded in both the US and Britain soon afterwards.

In a statement to The New York Times, a Terramar Project representative said the non-profit had run a campaign to reduce cigarette butts thrown into the ocean, and the publication of a marine conservation newsletter.