The financier Jeffrey Epstein is back in court on charges of the sex trafficking of minors. Vicky Ward and Ed Pilkington discuss his case. Plus: Aditya Chakrabortty wonders why the French super-rich who promised to donate to Notre Dame haven’t paid up yet

Jeffrey Epstein is a wealthy financier and one-time friend to the rich and famous, counting Donald Trump, Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton as acquaintances. In 2005 a 14-year-old girl reported that Epstein had molested her in Palm Beach. Others came forward, some of them also minors. But after plea negotiations between Epstein’s legal team and the then US attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, Epstein served just 13 months in prison.

This month he was arrested on sex trafficking charges and last week federal prosecutors claimed that lewd photographs of girls as young as 14 had been discovered in a safe in his Manhattan mansion. Epstein, 66, has pleaded not guilty. Journalist Vicky Ward tells Anushka Asthana about meeting Epstein in 2002 when she was profiling him for Vanity Fair magazine, while the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington discusses the current case.

Plus: Aditya Chakrabortty on why the super wealthy haven’t honoured their financial pledges to help rebuild Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral.