Members of the opposition Social Democrats (SDE) on Tuesday called for the Ministry of the Interior to get Estonia's security and law enforcement authorities to review the files, released wholesale after mounting pressure on the U.S. administration over the activities of Epstein, a powerful New York financier sex offender and pedophile involved in human trafficking, who died in 2019.

The SDE MPs are pressing for any information they may contain concerning Estonia or Estonian citizens.

The ISS' former chief, Arnold Sinisalu, noted that any persons named in the files could potentially be subject to blackmail, which in turn would pose a threat to national security and democratic institutions.

Harry Puusepp, the current director of the ISS, known in Estonian as the Kapo, noted the files published by the U.S. Department of Justice are publicly accessible to all via the department's website.

This does not mean the ISS is not investigating that source too, however. "The work of a security agency also includes gathering information from public sources, including various official channels," Puusepp said. Those known references concerning Estonia do not provide grounds to state that any published material points to previously unknown risks threatening Estonia's security, though the long-term ramifications of the Epstein files' release are not yet fully clear.

"International security, however, is indivisible, and the overall impact of the released files is very hard to assess. Several countries have identified indications of possible crimes and have informed the public about launching investigations," Puusepp noted.

"Offenses which may threaten national security fall under the investigative jurisdiction of the Internal Security Service. Based on what we know today, there is no reason to speak of anything of that kind in connection with the fragments of information related to Estonia," the ISS chief went on.

Last week, Latvian police announced that they had launched criminal proceedings on the basis of the Epstein documents to investigate possible human trafficking. The released files contained, among other things, references to Latvian modeling agencies and models who worked there.

Lithuania too has launched an investigation into possible human trafficking, as the Epstein files similarly included references to Lithuanian models and other public figures.

Investigative weekly Eesti Ekspress reported Wednesday that David Stern, an aide to the then-prince Andrew, a member of the British royal family, had emailed Epstein ahead of a trip to Tallinn which both the prince and Stern were going on in May 2016. Stern emailed Epstein that the trip was set to be "exciting" and that "The P (ie. "pussy," in Tallinn – ed.) must be outstanding."

French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who recruited young girls for Epstein-led trafficking operations, included Estonia on a list of countries in the region he visited during his "scouting" activities.

In August 2019, Epstein was found dead in his New York prison cell, with authorities stating the cause of death as suicide by hanging. His confidante and sometime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite, is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in the U.S. for her part in the case.

Epstein was thought to have close links to Russia and so was seen as a security threat in this respect too; concerns have been raised about confidential information the former prince Andrew may have leaked to Epstein while the former was a U.K. trade envoy.

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