Ghislaine Maxwell loses appeal against sex trafficking conviction | Ghislaine Maxwell

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the sex trafficking conviction of former British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and rejected her appeal.

Maxwell, 62, was arrested in 2020 and charged with involvement in the sexual abuse of young girls by her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein.

In 2021, Maxwell was found guilty of sex trafficking in a Manhattan federal court. She was found guilty on five of the six counts of recruiting and preparing four underage girls for abuse by Epstein between 1994 and 2004.

In 2022, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In the new ruling, filed on Tuesday in the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan and seen by the Guardian, the appeals court upheld Maxwell’s convictions and described her sentence as “procedurally appropriate”.

Maxwell appealed her conviction after her sentencing in 2022, arguing that she should be granted immunity from prosecution under a non-prosecution agreement that federal prosecutors in Florida reached with Epstein in 2007.

In its ruling Tuesday, the court wrote that the alleged crimes were time-barred and that Maxwell was not covered by the agreement.

Maxwell is serving her sentence in a low-security prison in Tallahassee and will be eligible for release on July 17, 2037.