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Jack Lang (right) as Minister of Culture under President François Mitterrand (left).
Photo Roger-Viollet via AFP
Epstein files are also causing a stir in France: mediagenic former minister Jack Lang is discredited
Jack Lang seemed to want to die in armor. The 86-year-old French former minister of the Socialist Party chairman since 2013 from the Institut du monde arabe (IMA) in Paris. At the end of last year, he said he would like to stay on as head of the cultural institute where Arab cultures are researched and celebrated. “If I’m somewhere, I stay there forever,” he said The World his motto.
Yet Lang said goodbye to ‘his’ IMA, after his name appeared hundreds of times in documents from the file of the deceased American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein released in the United States at the end of last month. Initially, the former minister refused to resign, but French justice and politics left him no choice: on Friday, the fraud inspection service PNF announced a preliminary investigation into tax fraud and money laundering due to shadowy financial ties that Lang appears to have had with Epstein. On Sunday, Lang had to appear at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the request of President Emmanuel Macron. To avoid that embarrassing visit, Lang announced on Saturday that he would resign. He denies doing anything wrong.
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Offshore company and loan from Epstein
In the part of the Epstein files that is public, Jack Lang’s name appears more than six hundred times. The name of his (lesser known) daughter Caroline Lang is even mentioned almost a thousand times – she also gave up various positions after this came to light. There are no indications that Lang or his daughter were involved in possible pedosexual crimes by Epstein, who abused underage girls and appears to have offered them to prominent politicians and businessmen.
Your generosity is infinite
The files do show that the Lang family had financial ties to Epstein, even after he was convicted in 2008 of recruiting an underage girl for prostitution. For example, Caroline Lang founded an offshore company with Epstein in 2016 research platform Mediapart was not reported to the French authorities – Jack Lang was also involved. In addition, he is said to have borrowed almost $60,000 from Epstein to produce a film about his time as a minister.
Lang previously said that until Epstein was arrested again in 2019, he did not know about his sex crimes and did not see him as a friend. Yet in the revealed emails he chooses “dear Jeffrey” a friendly tone. “Your generosity is infinite,” he wrote to Epstein in 2017, for example in an email that he ended with “with my friendship”.
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Influential minister
His resignation seems to be the sudden end of a decades-long career in which Jack Lang and his striking appearance – he visibly uses (a lot of) botox and dyes his hair dark black – reached the front pages of French newspapers countless times. After a career in local politics, Lang, often described as hyperactive, held several ministerial positions under the left-wing president François Mitterrand (1981-1995).
He stood out especially as Minister of Culture, including as the spiritual father of important events such as the annual Fête de la Musique where musicians of all stripes perform on the streets in French cities. He also played an important role in the construction of Mitterrands major works: from the glass pyramid at the Louvre to the Opéra Bastille concert hall and the IMA. He later became a Member of the European Parliament and minister of education under President Jacques Chirac.
Since Lang became chairman of the IMA in 2013, he knew the cultural institute thanks to his well-stocked address book to a higher level to lift. Lang attracted funding, criticized by some, from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among others, for the institute’s restoration. However, he did not shy away from addressing topics that could be sensitive, such as: exhibition about LGBTI people in Arab countries. He regularly spoke out on geopolitical issues, ranging from genocide in Gaza until the arrest of the French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal. When he spoke out in favor of a demonstration against the Algerian regime, he was rebuffed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The question is whether Lang will be able to shake off the Epstein scandal and maintain his prominent position in the French cultural world. His lawyer tells FranceInfo that Lang is not worried and his name will be cleared.
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DOCUMENTED REFERENCES
Exploring Documented Records
Public interest in the Epstein case continues not only because of court proceedings and testimonies, but also due to the growing body of documented records that help researchers and readers understand the broader context. Beyond legal files and media reports, some independent projects have organized publicly available data connected to Epstein’s activities.
One example is a structured archive of documented Amazon order records, where purchases are cataloged with dates and product details. While individual items do not prove wrongdoing on their own, examining documented information alongside established facts helps paint a clearer picture of the environment and circumstances surrounding the case.
Browse the structured archive of documented order records
For readers looking to review primary-source style data rather than interpretations, exploring compiled records can provide additional context to the broader discussion.
