Simon Andriesz, a British former banker who accused US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick of undisclosed business dealings with Jeffrey Epstein, has died at 57.
Transparency Task Force founder Andy Agathangelou said Andriesz passed away last week. Reports say he died by suicide while living in Cornwall, England. Neither the Commerce Department nor the FBI had commented when the first reports appeared.
Andriesz worked at BGC Partners, now BGC Group, the brokerage Lutnick led, until January 2017. On August 11, a UK employment tribunal struck out his unfair dismissal, disability discrimination and whistleblowing claims against the firm, Lutnick and Jean-Pierre Aubin. The judge ruled the claims came roughly nine years too late and lacked any reasonable prospect, and added that his similar US litigation from 2019 to 2024 would have sunk them on abuse-of-process grounds. The tribunal set a costs hearing for November 24.
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Reports say Andriesz brought the FBI claims of undisclosed Lutnick-Epstein business dealings during 2020 and 2021, and that the bureau did not follow up. They also say he gave the House Oversight Committee a 2018 email exchange between the two men about Adfin, a now-defunct online advertising company.
Lawmakers put that May 28, 2018 exchange in front of Lutnick at a May 6 deposition. Lutnick said he was not personally an Adfin investor but that Cantor Fitzgerald was, through its venture arm, Cantor Ventures, and that to his knowledge he learned of Epstein’s stake only after the documents became public.
The Epstein files show the two were co-investors in Adfin as recently as 2014, though Lutnick had earlier said he stopped speaking with Epstein in 2005. Democrats on the committee criticized his testimony as evasive and dishonest, while Republican Chairman James Comer defended him as transparent.
The White House dismissed a BBC investigation as a smear attempt against Lutnick, and the Commerce Department said he testified voluntarily and that no evidence shows wrongdoing.
Read: DOJ Caught Hiding Trump Accusations in Epstein Files
Reporting so far cites no official ruling on how he died and no evidence connecting the death to his former employer, Lutnick, Epstein, or his claims.
