A former senior Wall Street executive has uncovered new documentary evidence that contradicts public statements from U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick regarding his long-concealed business relationships with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Britain’s disgraced Prince Andrew. Simon Andriesz, who previously served as a managing director at BGC Partners — a financial brokerage under Lutnick’s Cantor Fitzgerald umbrella — shared his findings from the massive cache of publicly released Epstein court documents with members of the U.S. House Oversight Committee ahead of Lutnick’s May 2025 confirmation hearing appearance.
Andriesz, who has been locked in a years-long legal battle with his former employer after blowing the whistle on accounting misconduct at BGC in 2016, told the BBC he uncovered a 2018 email chain directly exchanged between Lutnick and Epstein about a joint startup investment both men held stakes in. After noticing that Cantor Fitzgerald executives routinely used initials instead of full names in internal communications, Andriesz searched the 3.5 million-page document trove for Lutnick’s initials HWL, rather than his full name — a search strategy that uncovered the correspondence missed by other researchers.
In the exchange, Epstein asked Lutnick directly for his perspective on growth prospects for Adfin, a digital advertising startup that counted both Epstein and Cantor Fitzgerald as investors. Lutnick replied that the firm was finally generating revenue and predicted it would become financially self-sufficient within the next 12 months. This directly contradicts Lutnick’s public and congressional testimony that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s investment in Adfin until 2025, and that he had only met Epstein once as neighbors in Manhattan 20 years prior.
The newly released Epstein files also contain a 2012 photograph showing Lutnick alongside Epstein on Little St James, Epstein’s private Caribbean island, years after the financier’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. In a separate finding, Andriesz uncovered details of a 2013 business proposal from Cantor Fitzgerald to partner with then-Prince Andrew, who was a close associate of Epstein. The plan outlined a £1 million loan to a firm controlled by Prince Andrew in exchange for exclusive access to the prince’s high-level global business contacts, a deal Andriesz described in an interview as an attempt to “buy a prince.”
Epstein himself warned Prince Andrew’s business advisor against the exclusive terms of the deal, which required Prince Andrew to only introduce wealthy clients to Cantor Fitzgerald. Documents show advisors from both sides negotiated the proposal for four months before it was ultimately abandoned. Cantor Fitzgerald did not deny that discussions took place, but confirmed the deal was never finalized. Prince Andrew, who was stripped of his royal titles in 2025, has not responded to requests for comment on the proposal.
When Lutnick appeared before the House Oversight Committee in May, he repeated his claim that he had only learned of Epstein’s Adfin investment in 2025, stated he unequivocally condemns Epstein’s criminal actions, and noted he has never been formally accused of any wrongdoing tied to the sex offender. All 21 Democratic members of the committee signed a formal letter calling for Lutnick’s immediate resignation, accusing him of lying to Congress about his ties to Epstein.
In response to questions from the BBC, the U.S. Commerce Department dismissed the allegations as a partisan political distraction, arguing there is no evidence of wrongdoing on Lutnick’s part. The White House echoed this defense, calling the BBC’s reporting a “pathetic and desperate attempt to slander” Lutnick, who it described as the most consequential commerce secretary in modern U.S. history. BGC Partners has dismissed all of Andriesz’s allegations as “categorically false,” arguing multiple investigations across different jurisdictions have failed to substantiate his claims. The firm says it terminated Andriesz’s employment in 2017 for refusing to follow medical guidance, declining to perform core job duties, and abandoning his role, and denies any retaliation against him for whistleblowing.
Andriesz, who now lives in a quiet seaside village in Cornwall, UK, says his decade of legal conflict with Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC has destroyed his career, drained his finances, and damaged his health. Though he received a $420,000 whistleblower award from U.S. regulators after BGC was ordered to pay a $3 million penalty for supervision, reporting, and record-keeping violations stemming from his original 2016 allegations, he says neither U.S. nor UK authorities have held the firm or its leadership fully accountable, nor protected him from retaliation. He told the BBC he has been frustrated by the lack of public and official interest in his findings on Lutnick’s ties to Epstein.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, leaving behind a massive trove of personal and business documents that have been gradually released to the public over the past year. Lutnick, a prominent Wall Street executive, was appointed to lead the Commerce Department by President Donald Trump in 2025, after which he sold his controlling stake in Cantor Fitzgerald and transferred leadership of the firm to his sons.