A US judge has denied bail for Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's longtime associate who is charged with luring young girls so the late financier could sexually abuse them, after she pleaded not guilty at a hearing.
In Manhattan, Judge Alison Nathan rejected the 58-year-old's bid for bail after prosecutors portrayed the wealthy socialite as an extreme flight risk.
A trial date has been set for 12 July 2021.
Prosecutors have accused Ms Maxwell of helping Epstein recruit and eventually abuse girls from 1994 to 1997 and lying about her role in depositions in 2016.
Ms Maxwell was charged with six criminal counts, including four related to transporting minors for illegal sexual acts and two for perjury.
"Not guilty, your honour," Ms Maxwell said, after the judge asked her how she wished to plead to the charges. She waived the public reading of the indictment.
Ms Maxwell appeared by video from the Brooklyn jail where she is being held.
Her lawyers sought a bail package including a $5 million bond and home confinement with electronic monitoring.
Prosecutors wanted Ms Maxwell to remain in detention and opposed her bid for bail, calling her an "extreme" flight risk with no reason to stay in the United States.
Prosecutors said her wealth and multiple citizenships - American, French and British - also supported the need for detention.
Ms Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend, was arrested on 2 July in Bradford, New Hampshire, where authorities said she was hiding out at a 156-acre property she bought in December in an all-cash transaction with her identity shielded.
She has been held since 6 July at the Metropolitan Detention Center, a Brooklyn jail.
Epstein was charged in July 2019 with sexually exploiting dozens of girls and women from 2002 to 2005 at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida.
He took his own life at age 66 in a Manhattan jail.
Prosecutors accused Ms Maxwell of luring girls as young as 14 by asking them about their lives, schools and families and taking them shopping or to movies - acts, they said, that served as "the prequel" to Epstein's abuse.
Lawyers for Ms Maxwell had also said bail was justified because she might contract Covid-19 in jail.
Lawyers for Ms Maxwell said she moved to the New Hampshire property and changed her phone and email address in order to escape "unrelenting and intrusive media coverage".
Prosecutors said that when FBI agents went to arrest Ghislaine Maxwell, they had to forcibly enter her home, where she hid in an interior room, and found a mobile phone wrapped in tin foil in an apparent effort to evade detection.
Ms Maxwell also used former British military personnel to guard her in New Hampshire, prosecutors said.
Her lawyers have previewed Ms Maxwell's possible defenses.
These include that her alleged misconduct occurred long ago and would be hard to prosecute, and that she was shielded by Epstein's 2007 plea agreement with federal prosecutors in Miami,which covered "any potential co-conspirators".
