Alex Ritson

It's called Bin Enakil, which means between the palm trees.

It's located in an oasis outside Marrakesh called the Palmery.

I was actually there 10 days ago, but I hasten to add I didn't stay in this palace.

It's four and a half hectares, five and a half thousand square metres.

It has 60 marble fountains, seven gardens with more than 2,000 palm trees.

Intricate stucco plasterwork on the walls, Arabic calligraphy, geometrical mosaics, gold-draped rooms, Moorish horseshoe-shaped arches, a spa, an outdoor pool.

It's actually modelled on the Alhambra Palace in Granada in Spain, which is the 13th century palace of the Emir of Granada.

And weirdly, the project was started by a very wealthy German businessman with a bizarre name of Gunther Kiss,

who discovered a 600-year-old original plan for the Alhambra in a London bookshop.

So he set about recreating the Alhambra in Morocco, and it took 1,300 craftsmen to build it over the course of three years.

I feel kind of silly asking this, but why would Epstein have wanted to buy it?

Morocco provides privacy and security, and there was quite a lot of haggling over the price.

It was initially valued at more than $65 million, but Jeffrey Epstein tried to make an arrangement to pay $15 million for the house and then a further $18 million.

for shares in an offshore company that owned the property.

This was probably to avoid having to pay tax on the property or to reduce that amount and he'd been trying to buy it since 2011 but financial institutions were tightening their grip on Epstein's activities.

He actually signed a wire transfer for $15 million for the house on 5 July 2019, the day before he was arrested, and he later was found dead in his prison cell the next month.

Now, Morocco has...

No extradition treaty with the United States, so it could have also been to avoid arrest.

But a former associate of Epstein said he had no idea that he was about to be detained.

As I say, Morocco has always been a haven for the rich and famous, former African leaders, and it's been described as a sunny place for shady people.