In 2016, the French luxury fashion house Hermès decided to pull an item it had donated to a charity auction after it appeared to have been bought by Jeffrey Epstein. In an email made public in this month’s tranche of Epstein files, Epstein’s assistant says someone at the auction platform had relayed to them that Hermès was “not comfortable” with Epstein as a donor and that he would be refunded. It’s a reminder that institutions – and the people at their helms – can, when they wish, still recognise a line they will not cross. No sermon, no press release: just a quiet act of moral housekeeping that now reads like a lesson in basic civic hygiene.
France is discovering how rare that reflex proved to be at home. The latest cache of Epstein files – emails, memos and legal documents released by the US Department of Justice – does not reveal a hidden French paedophile ring. So far, the only confirmed French sexual connection to Epstein remains Jean‑Luc Brunel, the modelling agent who died in police custody in 2022 while being investigated on suspicion of trafficking women to Epstein. Instead, the new files trace how Epstein ingratiated himself into parts of the country’s political and cultural elite, providing private jets, introductions and offshore structures to people long accustomed to thinking of themselves as beyond reproach.
At the centre of the French storm stands Jack Lang, now 86: former socialist culture minister under François Mitterrand, architect of the Fête de la musique, and until this week president of the government-funded Institut du monde arabe. His name appears hundreds of times in the documents: dinners, messages, film projects, birthday parties and, above all, favours. In one 2017 message, Lang thanks Epstein for his “infinite generosity” and then asks if he might once again “abuse” him by borrowing a chauffeur-driven car to attend a birthday dinner hosted by the Aga Khan, 60km from Paris. It is the language of the court, not that of the Republic.
Confronted with the correspondence, Lang has pleaded good faith. He says he met Epstein “about 15 years ago” at a dinner hosted by Woody Allen, that he does not usually ask friends for their criminal record, and that he “knew nothing” of the financier’s past, even though Epstein had already served a sentence in Florida for offences involving minors. On Friday evening, however, pressed by the Élysée Palace, he “proposed” his resignation from the Institut du monde arabe, after France’s National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) opened a preliminary investigation into suspected tax‑fraud laundering targeting him and his daughter Caroline.
It is Caroline Lang who gives the affair its most contemporary dimension. A seasoned film producer and former executive at Warner Bros in France, she co‑founded a US Virgin Islands company with Epstein in 2016, financed entirely by him and ostensibly intended to trade works by young French artists. The structure was not declared to the French tax authorities. Two days before Epstein’s death in 2019, he named her in his will as the beneficiary of $5m – a sum she insists she did not know about and has never seen.
On French television, Caroline Lang described herself as “staggeringly naive”, spoke of a “generous sponsor” and “a friend, not an intimate”, and stressed she faces no criminal charges. The file against her is fiscal and ethical, not sexual. That distinction matters – and it also sharpens the unease. What’s troubling is the comfort with material dependence on a man whose fortune was already inseparable from documented abuse.
A familiar feature of French public life emerges: a politico-cultural caste that outsources the cost of its lifestyle to “friends”. For decades, Jack Lang embodied the grandeur of the cultural left. The Epstein papers also depict him as a habitual user of private jets and chauffeured cars, the expense of which was paid for by a “courteous, charming, generous” American acquaintance. Lang’s daughter updates the pattern for the age of limited‑liability companies and tax havens.
Epstein’s imprint on French democracy lies less in sexual exploitation than in money and political influence. In 2018 and 2019, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former strategist, corresponded with Epstein about how to shore up the debt-ridden finances of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, then reliant on loans from a Russian bank (there is no evidence Epstein ever provided funding). The correspondence situates France’s main far‑right party within a transatlantic ecosystem in which private finance and ideological alignment blur democratic boundaries.
As if to underline the point, the Kremlin has now added a more overtly hostile layer. This week, French authorities exposed a Russian-linked disinformation campaign seeking to forge a connection between Emmanuel Macron and Epstein, using a fake news website, doctored screenshots and mass amplification on social media. The episode shows how Epstein has become a kind of narrative solvent: a name easily attached to anyone a hostile state wishes to discredit.
France is hardly alone. Embarrassing correspondence is surfacing in London, Rome and Washington too. But in France the affair punctures an old self-image: that of a republic held together by culture, grand institutions and venerable figures of the left, presumed immune to sordid compromise. The Langs could not decline a free flight, an offshore vehicle or a promised legacy. Hermès managed it with a short email and a refunded credit card. Moral courage is not guaranteed by office, status or culture – it is chosen, one email, one decision at a time.
Agnès Poirier is a political commentator, writer and critic for the British, American and European press
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