How Epstein tried exploiting Haiti aid efforts for ulterior motives

Shirsho Dasgupta, Miami Herald on Jun 9, 2026

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For Jeffrey Epstein, the relief efforts following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and devastated the Caribbean nation’s economy were just another opportunity to promote himself.

The earthquake struck about six months after Epstein had finished his jail sentence in Palm Beach County on solicitation charges, and he was, at the time, on a campaign to rehabilitate himself with the global elite.

He agreed to lend one of his private jets to deliver aid to the country and bought tickets to a benefit program in the French Riviera in exchange for positive news stories, records released by the U.S. Justice Department show.

Epstein rushed to publicize a $25,000 contribution he had made to an educational foundation run by Unik Ernest, a Haitian immigrant who had risen from a busboy in South Beach to celebrity promoter.

The financier also planned to meet Michel Martelly, then Haitian president, in Port-au-Prince, calling him “hilarious, a realist.” The Herald did not find any evidence that a meeting took place. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Martelly in 2024 for arming gangs and trafficking cocaine.

But Epstein, a multimillionaire, seemingly thought little of Haiti or its impoverished people beyond how the country could benefit him, describing it in emails as unstable and in squalor but a “safe place to park money.”

The records do not provide details on how he thought he could safeguard his assets in the country.

Charity for publicity

Roughly two weeks after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake nearly destroyed Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12, 2010, Epstein received a request from aid organizers in the U.S. Virgin Islands to lend his Gulfstream jet for a humanitarian flight to Haiti. The flight would carry critical medicines, food, nurses and doctors.

“Inform Mr. Epstein that he will be getting some Media Coverage and publicity and that will definitely be very good for him,” the message read.

Epstein agreed: “[I] will do it, if we can protect the interior.”

In another instance two years later, media publicist Peggy Siegal asked him to buy her a ticket to Sean Penn’s “Haiti: Carnival in Cannes“ benefit program on May 18, 2012, at the Agora Pavilion of the Cannes Film Festival.

Siegal, then a cultural ringmaster in New York and Hollywood, was helping Epstein rehabilitate himself at the time, records show.

“[T]ake it slow and stay quiet,” she said in an August 2010 email. “Your friends are there for you.”

Siegal, the records show, asked Epstein for the $5,000 ticket four days before the Cannes event, adding that it would be tax deductible.

“[Y]es, of course. I will always help,” Epstein wrote back, and directed his aides to make the purchase.

Siegal, who now spends most of her time in Palm Beach, did not respond to the Herald’s questions. She has previously acknowledged being charmed by the financier and said that she was “in denial” about Epstein’s history and activities.

School funding

Fresh off the plane from Haiti in the 1990s as a teen, Unik Ernest’s first job was as a busboy at a trendy Caribbean restaurant in South Beach. But by the early 2000s, he was organizing celebrity-studded parties in Miami and New York.

Ernest and Epstein first got introduced in late 2011. The records do not reveal who connected the two.

Epstein, the records show, took a liking to Ernest, offering him business advice and suggesting he become the conduit for “black wealth to Silicon Valley.”

“Why are there so few blacks in silicon valley. great opportuibty [sic],” Epstein wrote to Ernest in a 2014 email.

In October 2011, the financier donated $25,000 to The Edeyo Foundation, a nonprofit Ernest had created in 2007 to provide education to children in Port-au-Prince.

Epstein’s contribution was for the Ecole du Bel-Air, a school the foundation was building in the city in the aftermath of the earthquake. He rushed to send out a press release citing his donation.

But the records show that it caught the attention of Edeyo’s board members, who had warned Ernest not to take Epstein’s money.

Ernest requested several times that Epstein take down the press release.

“[N]o hard feelings?” Epstein replied. “[S]orry you should return the money asap if it was depositied [sic].”

Ernest returned the money and reassured him of their good relationship.

Ernest did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment. He has previously denied any wrongdoing.

While Epstein’s philanthropy to institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University garnered press attention, his donations to Haiti-related causes did not. The Herald did not find a single mainstream news outlet that reported on them.

Federal authorities arrested Epstein on sex trafficking charges on July 6, 2019. He was found dead in a Manhattan detention facility around a month later.