According to local sources, Jeffrey Epstein traveled to Cuba invited by former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, as reported by Colombian president Andrés Pastrana.
The trip to Cuba took place in March 2003, when Pastrana was no longer president of Colombia.
Flight records show that Pastrana was aboard one of Epstein’s private planes that left on March 20, 2003, from New Jersey Teterboro Airport to Palm Beach International Airport, where Epstein had a residence. Pastrana also appears in the manifesto of another flight the next day from Palm Beach to Nassau International Airport in the Bahamas.
The 2003 trip to Cuba, however, does not appear either in the records of Rodger or in the records of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), according to the source.
If Epstein traveled to the Caribbean island, he probably wanted to avoid knowing about his presence, because as a US citizen, he probably would have been violating U.S. embargo laws on Cuba that prohibit Americans traveling to the island for tourism.
“It was probably an illegal trip,” said attorney Robert Muse, an expert in the embargo laws. “At that time there were very few categories of authorized trips and it is not clear that he would have qualified under one of them.”
In 2003, Castro, who died in 2016, was still president and Epstein had not yet been charged with sexual abuse. The invitation to the American tycoon would not have been an unusual gesture since Castro liked to surround himself with foreign personalities.
Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide last week in a Manhattan jail, was accused of sexually abusing and trafficking with minors, the suicide investigation is still ongoing.
