For Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire Goldsmith family was a gateway to elite society and he wanted to be in their circle.

The disgraced financier, who died in prison in 2019 facing sex-trafficking charges, longed for a billionaire’s lifestyle and cultivated the family’s friends, bankers, business associates and advisers.

But Sir James Goldsmith, who was knighted by the Queen in 1976 and became a prominent British politician, remained wary of the American financier and even “despised” him, his daughter Jemima recently told the Guardian.

Two decades before Epstein came under federal investigation, Goldsmith – who died in 1997 – told a confidant that Epstein was a “sexual deviant” who was recruiting children for illicit activities.

Goldsmith “told me not to have anything to do with him, that he was a pervert, and he didn’t want him near any of us. He had four daughters to protect,” recalled the famous French architect Robert Couturier, who designed opulent homes for Goldsmith in New York and Mexico.