However, it is enough to get a glimpse-or perhaps a smell-of this world of powerful corporate, financial and state actors, and their incessant intermingling.Įpstein was regularly meeting with the most powerful figures in the global economy, as well as their key political agents-from Kathryn Ruemmler, general counsel in the Obama White House and later at Goldman Sachs, to Leon Black, the billionaire owner of Apollo Global Management, one of the largest asset managers in the world. It provides just a small window into Epstein’s operations over 30 years, and his wide circle of contacts. The material from the Journal is limited to dates from a calendar diary of Epstein’s meetings and various notes and emails over the four-year period. The lawsuits are against JPMorgan Chase and allege the bank knowingly facilitated the financial transactions that Epstein used to fund his abuse of young girls.

They make use of their connections to cover up their crimes, or, depending on the circumstances, arrange for the elimination of those former friends and associates whose activities have become an inconvenience or a danger.Īlmost four years after Epstein’s death, a series of articles last week in the Wall Street Journal have made it possible to peer further into this incestuous world of high finance and corporate-state power in which Epstein played a key intermediary role.ĭue to ongoing lawsuits filed by the attorney general of the Virgin Islands, and by an unnamed victim of Epstein’s abuse, the Journal has been able to access thousands of pages of emails and schedules of Epstein, dating from 2013 to 2017. The super-rich prey upon the poor and the vulnerable, using them as they wish. We argued Epstein’s case was significant not because of the financier’s particular depravity but rather because his operation and death expressed something true about capitalist society as a whole. First, why was the media dismissing questions about Epstein’s death as “conspiracy theories”? Two, who wanted Jeffrey Epstein dead? While officially declared a suicide, his death was more likely murder, a contract killing to silence the specialist in deal-making and tax evasion-and sex trafficker-before a trial could produce evidence that would implicate many others in the US ruling elite.Īt the time, the World Socialist Web Site asked two important questions. In August 2019, financier Jeffrey Epstein died in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan as he awaited trial for criminal charges relating to his decades-long sex trafficking of underage girls.

Friendship by Helen Mortimer