FINANCIER Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-girlfriend claims she is being prosecuted on sex abuse charges because Epstein killed himself and prosecutors wanted a substitute, according to unsealed court papers.

British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers challenged the case brought against her last July on multiple grounds in papers filed last week and unsealed on Thursday with some redactions.

“One does not need to engage in complex analysis to understand what has happened here: the government has sought to substitute our client for Jeffrey Epstein, even if it means stretching – and ultimately exceeding – the bounds of the law,” the lawyers wrote in the Manhattan federal court documents.

“The government’s sudden zeal to prosecute Ms Maxwell for alleged conduct with Epstein in the 1990s – conduct for which the government never even charged Epstein – follows a history that is both highly unusual and deeply troubling,” they added.

Maxwell, 59, is scheduled for a July trial on charges that she recruited three teenage girls from 1994 to 1997 for Epstein to sexually abuse. Prosecutors allege that Maxwell sometimes joined in.

The charges against Maxwell came exactly a year after Epstein was arrested for sex trafficking. He killed himself in a federal jail a month later.

Maxwell, who has citizenship in the US, the UK and France, has been held without bail after a judge rejected a $28.5 million bail proposal on the grounds that she had not been fully forthcoming about her finances and other matters and that she remained a threat to flee.

As part of the bail proposal, Maxwell disclosed she has set aside more than $7m for lawyers out of $22.5m in assets belonging to herself and her husband.

In the released documents, Maxwell’s lawyers attacked the government’s case on multiple grounds, including that a grand jury seated in suburban Westchester County deprived her of non-white grand jurors to decide her fate.

They also said perjury charges stemming from her testimony in two depositions in 2016 in a since-settled civil case must be tossed out because the questions posed were ambiguous and the answers given were true.

Another unique challenge relates to a non-prosecution agreement Epstein signed with federal prosecutors in Florida 12 years ago that spared him from charges as he pleaded guilty to a state charge and served 13 months in prison. Her lawyers say Epstein intended for the document to protect any alleged co-conspirators, including Maxwell.