On Tuesday, February 3, Jack Lang was still very much the master of his domain. He welcomed Le Monde, seated on the couch in his glass-walled office on the eighth floor of the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA, Arab World Institute), the Paris institution he had been leading for more than 13 years.

The former culture minister under President François Mitterrand jumped in surprise when asked whether he planned to resign. “What have I done that is reprehensible? What legal action has been taken against me? This is absurd,” he said. The day before, Mediapart had revealed the “financial ties” between the Langs – he and his daughter Caroline – and the American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a businessman known for his sprawling network, who died in detention in August 2019.

In the mountain of emails released on January 30 by the US Justice Department, the relationship between the Lang family and Epstein appeared to be woven with gifts and favors exchanged over seven years, up until the sexual predator’s arrest in 2019. Ironically, Lang himself did not use email: His entourage would print them out for him so he could annotate them. “He does not have a computer; he has never written a single email himself,” his team at the IMA confirmed. Lang traveled all over the world, but also did not speak English very well.

You have 91.03% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.