An entity named for Ghislaine Maxwell, quietly renamed in 2010

Publius · a note from the register

In December 1999, a Delaware corporation was formed to hold a helicopter. Its file number is 3143027, and the name on the incorporation was Air Ghislaine, Inc. — after Ghislaine Maxwell, whom a JPMorgan due-diligence report would later identify as the entity's sole owner. It kept that name for more than a decade.

Then, on 11 February 2010, the corporation filed a Delaware amendment and changed its name to Shmitka Air, Inc. Five months later, on 6 July 2010, it changed its name again — to Freedom Air International, Inc., a name that says nothing at all. On 19 December 2012 it was dissolved. The whole sequence sits in four filings, the entire life of the company, retrievable from Delaware for the price of a records search.

The dates are the point. The name "Ghislaine" came off the entity in February 2010, in the middle of the civil litigation that followed Epstein's 2008 plea — and the two Delaware amendment dates line up, to the month, with the dates the entity's aircraft was re-registered. The paperwork and the airframe moved together. An obviously named thing was made unobtrusive, in stages, and then wound up.

What the register records, and what it does not. It records one Delaware corporation, its file number, its three names and the dates it carried each, its dissolution, and the due-diligence report that names its owner. It does not conclude why the name was changed; the filing states the fact of the change and its date, and nothing about intent. What the documents establish is enough on its own: a company named for Ghislaine Maxwell existed from 1999, shed that name in February 2010, and was dissolved at the end of 2012.

Sources are on the entity page: Freedom Air International, Inc. (the corporation's final name; formerly Air Ghislaine, Inc.). Return to the register.