A former Wall Street managing director who took 2018 emails linking Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to Jeffrey Epstein before Congress has died in an apparent suicide, his advocates confirmed.
Daily Caller reported that Simon Andriesz, the 57-year-old British banker and onetime Lutnick employee, was found dead after The Banker first carried the news on Friday.
Andy Agathangelou, head of the Transparency Task Force, confirmed the death and said Andriesz had been a valued member of the whistleblowing community the group supports.
Agathangelou stated:
"It is with great sadness that we share the news that Simon Andriesz, a valued member of our community, passed away last week,"
Andriesz had raised alarms about business links between Lutnick and the convicted sex offender Epstein, then shared those findings with the House Oversight Committee ahead of a scheduled May meeting with the Commerce secretary.
Andriesz discovered a 2018 email chain between Lutnick and Epstein discussing plans for a startup business they were working on together. He also located earlier material showing Lutnick’s firms had planned in 2013 to go into business with then-Prince Andrew, who himself carried documented Epstein connections.
Those discoveries sat inside a larger pattern of elite names that keep surfacing around Epstein’s network, including the legal fights that followed related arrests.
Readers tracking similar fallout can see the same orbit in coverage of how Mountbatten-Windsor takes Thames Valley Police to court after Epstein arrest.
Andriesz went further. While locked in a dispute with his former employer BGC Partners, part of Lutnick’s Cantor Fitzgerald group, he had given interviews to the FBI. He later found his own name inside Epstein files that referenced those interviews, a discovery he described as completely shocking.
On Aug. 9 he summarized the personal cost:
"The personal consequences of whistleblowing, and the retaliation I say followed, have been devastating for my family and me,"
Lutnick, now serving as Commerce Secretary, issued a clear public rejection of Epstein’s crimes. According to The Banker he said:
"I unequivocally condemn the conduct attributed to Jeffrey Epstein and everyone who participated in his illegal activities,"
He added:
"The survivors of his crimes deserve our respect and support."
Rep. Thomas Massie noted on X that Lutnick later admitted visiting the island yet denied the business dealings Andriesz had flagged. Massie wrote that Andriesz “uncovered 2018 emails linking Howard Lutnick to Jeffrey Epstein’s Adfin investment and took them to House Oversight,” and that the BBC had reported the findings before the banker’s death at 57.
Transparency fights over the broader Epstein record have already produced public friction inside the current administration, including moments when Vance concedes Trump administration botched Epstein files rollout.
Andriesz had worked as a Wall Street managing director before turning to these disclosures. He participated in Transparency Task Force events focused on financial wrongdoing and spoke openly about the toll the process took on his family.
The sequence matters. Andriesz delivered his research to House Oversight before Lutnick’s planned appearance. Lutnick also testified on February 10, 2026, before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies in Washington.
No new official determination on the precise manner or location of Andriesz’s death appears in the available accounts beyond the description of an apparent suicide and Agathangelou’s confirmation that he passed away last week. Law enforcement statements, a coroner’s ruling, and the full authenticated text of the 2018 emails remain outside what has been published so far.
What stands is the paper trail Andriesz said he recovered: the 2018 startup discussion, the 2013 Andrew plans, the unexpected appearance of his own FBI interviews inside Epstein’s files, and his decision to carry those items to Congress.
Epstein’s crimes already produced one high-profile conviction of associate Ghislaine Maxwell on sex-trafficking charges. Every fresh document drop and every witness who steps forward keeps forcing the same demand, full release of the remaining files and equal application of the law to every powerful name that surfaces.
Whistleblowers who drag hidden business ties into daylight deserve protection and answers, not silence after they are gone.
