An acquaintance of the former French culture minister told the newspaper that 86-year-old Jack Lang was run over as if by a “steamroller”. Sunday Tribune. Others will think that Lang was just caught up in his past. He has it on the weekend his resignation as President of the Paris Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA). The reason: Lang’s name, as well as that of his daughter Caroline, appeared several hundred times recent Epstein files on. Since it is allegedly about secret offshore investments and real estate transactions, the judiciary has initiated a preliminary investigation.
Lang is not the only one in France to appear in the compromising archive documents, but he is probably the most prominent. It’s been a while since Jack Lang was known to everyone in France. As culture and education minister in the 1980s and 1990s, he was a cornerstone of the Mitterrand era. Among other things, many private radio stations owe him the annual “Fête de la musique” on June 21st.
He also played a key role in getting the cultural policy of the socialist head of state François Mitterrand rolling, including his pharaonic building projects (Pyramid of the Louvre, Opéra Bastille). If France still has great appeal in film, music or fashion today, this is at least partly due to Lang.
However, some of the close contacts he maintained appear highly problematic today – primarily his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, whom he says he met in 2012 through Woody Allen. Lang does not claim to have known that Epstein had been convicted of prostitution of minors in 2008.
Rumors of pedophilia have been around for a long time
The mention of the name Jack Lang in the new Epstein files probably wouldn’t be a headline if rumors of pedophilia against him hadn’t been circulating for a long time and repeatedly. Without any solid evidence, it was rumored that he had taken part in orgies with minors in Marrakesh, Morocco. When people in Paris whisper about pedo-criminal scandals among the political elite, his name inevitably comes up.
In 1977, Lang, together with other politically left-wing intellectuals (including Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Louis Aragon and Michel Foucault), launched a petition The World signed, which called for leniency for people accused of sexually abusing minors without resorting to violence. He also later publicly expressed a certain understanding for writers like Gabriel Matzneff who were denounced for pedophilia.
There is no presumption of innocence in the rumor mill and for public morality. Opponents from their own and enemy camps often played the allegations against Lang when he was a member of the opposition from 2002 to 2012, but also later. Nevertheless, his international reputation as a cultural promoter was intact enough to make him head of the IMA in 2012.
“Today he is paying the bill for 40 years of rumors about him,” quotes the Sunday Tribune the anonymous confidant of the fallen cultural star. Now is the evidence that was previously sought in vain? As long as there is nothing solid about Lang’s involvement Epstein’s criminal activities present, the ex-culture minister can complain that he is a victim of the motto: went along, hung along.