Inside Epstein’s web: The 137 men and women who reveal how his international network of power and influence operated

May 1, 2011 was a day like any other on the agenda of Jeffrey Epstein, less than two years after leaving the Florida jail where he served time for procuring a minor for prostitution. This is how that day played out, according to declassified documents from the U.S. government: at 9:30 a.m., breakfast with the diplomat Terje Rod-Larsen. At 11 a.m., a meeting with Nick Ribis, a former executive for Donald Trump’s hotels. At 1 p.m., an appointment with the journalist Michael Wolff. At 5 p.m., another appointment with Howard Lutnick, current U.S. Secretary of Commerce. At 6:30 p.m., dinner with the filmmaker Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi Previn, along with other guests like the neuroscientist Steve Kosslyn and hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin. At 8:30 p.m., another dinner in the home of designer Vera Wang.

Showing up in the Epstein files doesn’t mean a person is guilty of having committed a crime, but the Department of Justice’s January release of a tranche of more than three million documents has exposed the billionaire’s connections in the most elite of circles. Politicians, businesspeople, academics, artists and members of royalty often exchanged messages or met with Epstein at one of his many properties, even after his 18-month jail sentence (imposed in 2008 as part of a controversial plea deal in Florida, and of which he only served 13 months).

EL PAÍS has analyzed Epstein’s relationship with 137 people — 109 men and 28 women — whose links to the sex offender have been proven in legal proceedings or who have appeared in the many journalistic investigations of the case, including those carried out by this publication. We have sought to understand how Epstein wielded influence in this circle, who he trusted, and how long these relationships lasted. The selection of individuals is reflected in the following graphic, and is based on their notoriety and closeness to Epstein. The volume of information and its formats (censored documents and photos, duplicated and unrelated files) prevented the creation of an exhaustive list of everyone who was in contact with him.

For Epstein’s network to function, a group of little-known but crucial collaborators were needed. One of them is the person who is mentioned the most in the files, from before 2000 to 2019: Lesley Groff, his assistant for nearly two decades. Searching “Groff” among the documents leads to sifting through thousands of emails about organizing dinners, buying tickets to shows, making deposits and arranging accommodations at her boss’s residences. Her name appears 163,000 times across emails and court documents.

Karyna Shuliak, Epstein’s final girlfriend (36 years younger than him), was the last person he spoke with before committing suicide in August 2019, and is the primary heir to his fortune. Epstein used his contacts to get Shuliak (the second-most mentioned name in the files, at 36,000 appearances) into Columbia University’s dental medicine program after her application was rejected in 2012. He called upon help from the program’s dean, a director and its vice dean for academic affairs, according to the declassified documents (click on links to review the files).

Another member of Epstein’s inner circle is Ghislaine Maxwell (17,000 mentions), his ex-girlfriend who has been identified as the primary accomplice in the financier’s crimes. She is the only person who is currently incarcerated for the offenses, and is serving a 20-year sentence. Darren Indyke (18,000 mentions) was the pedophile’s lawyer from 1995 until his death. And Boris Nikolic (14,000 mentions), former advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and an important link between Epstein and Microsoft, was named executor of the sexual aggressor’s will.

“Blonde, Red or Brunette, spread out geographically/With this net of fish, Jeff’s now The Old Man and The Sea,” wrote Epstein’s fellow multi-millionaire and former client Leon Black (8,000 mentions in the files) in a 50^th birthday greeting album. Black paid $62.5 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2023 to avoid possible charges related to the pedophile’s sex trafficking activities, and resigned as CEO and chairman of his asset management firm. That same month, he was sued for hiding his ties to Epstein from shareholders.

Woody Allen (7,000 mentions) was Epstein’s neighbor in New York and a frequent guest in the multi-millionaire’s social engagements. The movie director turned to Epstein for help in getting his daughter into college, according to findings from the documents. Ehud Barak (4,000 appearances), who was Israel’s prime minister from 1999 to 2001, discussed politics and business plans with the U.S. magnate. Cecile de Jongh (7,000 mentions), wife of the former governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, site of the pedophile’s private island, has been investigated for working for him to avoid customs regulations.

Eight of the 137 individuals analyzed have been accused of sex crimes by Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent of Epstein’s alleged victims: the former Prince Andrew of England, Ghislaine Maxwell, Alan Dershowitz, Glenn Dubin, Bill Richardson, Marvin Minsky, George J. Mitchell and Jean-Luc Brunel. All were mentioned in her official 2016 statement in the case against Maxwell.

The former Prince Andrew, who reached an out-of-court settlement with Giuffre in February 2022 for an amount the British press estimated at around $16 million, was detained on February 19 under suspicion of sharing confidential British government information with Epstein. In 2022, Giuffre retracted her accusations against Dershowitz after admitting she might have mistakenly identified him as her assailant.

Aside from Maxwell, four women have been identified as Epstein’s accomplices: Sarah Kellen, Lesley Groff, Adriana Ross and Nadia Marcinkova. The latter was also accused of sexual abuse by a victim of the trafficking network, according to The New York Times. One of the conditions under which Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 was that none of these individuals would be investigated as part of the judicial proceedings. The financier also negotiated the ability to spend up to 12 hours a day (or 16, according to some sources) working outside the prison during his sentence.

After Epstein’s death in 2019, federal authorities said that the controversial plea deal only applied to investigations in Florida, opening up the possibility of filing charges in other jurisdictions against his alleged accomplices. Besides Groff, these individuals appear in the files just a few dozen times.

Other members of Epstein’s closest circle, like his lawyer Indyke and Richard Kahn, his accountant, have appeared in lawsuits filed by abuse victims, as administrators of Epstein’s estate and facilitators of his crimes. Some of the victims were included in the preliminary approval of a $35 million settlement granted in early March.

Modeling scout Daniel Siad has been described an an alleged facilitator and recruiter in Barcelona and Ibiza for Epstein’s criminal network. Swedish model Ebba Karlsson filed French criminal allegations against him in February for rape and trafficking, after he was identified in the case’s documents. Siad denies the accusations. “In This busyness I feel like fisherman some time I cache quick, some time no fish [sic],” the headhunter wrote to Epstein in 2014 regarding his search for girls for his agency, some of them 15 and 16 years old. Modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, found dead in a prison cell in 2022, was accused of rape and the trafficking of minors within Epstein’s network.

Other men have been the target of criticism for exchanging messages with Epstein that contain sexual content or their intentions to set up dates with women, like entrepreneurs Anil Ambani and Brock Pierce, art collector Jean Pigozzi, Saudi political advisor Raafat al Sabbagh and film producer and co-owner of the New York Giants, Steve Tisch.

Contacts in politics and finance

More than half of the contacts analyzed were people tied to politics and finance, but Epstein was also passionate about science. Of the 137 profiles that were selected, 23 occupied prominent positions in the academic sector, with names like geneticist George Church, who the multi-millionaire asked to analyze his genes, and to whom he made donations to the tune of millions of dollars. Another name that appears is Dan Ariely, a Duke University psychology professor who says that he approached Epstein out of curiosity — apparently, looking to learn why people pardon others who commit crimes. His correspondence with the sex offender lasted from 2009 to 2019, and Ariely even visited his New York home.

Epstein’s web included people of all kinds, like impresario Tommy Mottola; wellness guru Deepak Chopra; pilots Brian Vickers and Eddie Irvine; magician David Copperfield; former Victoria’s Secret executive Leslie Wexner and Spanish socialite Astrid Gil-Casares.

The relationships the financier maintained with elites multiplied after his 2008 sentence: in at least 65 cases, their last contact with the magnate came after his prison term. Among others, the tech executive and one-time right-hand man of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, wrote to Epstein in 2012 to coordinate a visit to the island, though Musk says that the trip never came to pass. In 2018 and 2019, Epstein sought advice from the renowned linguist Noam Chomsky, who he had met in 2015, on how to rehabilitate his public image after the abuse charges. “What the vultures dearly want is public response, which then provides a public opening for an onslaught of venomous attacks, many from just publicity seekers or cranks of all sorts,” the philosopher told the magnate.

Some of the relationships lasted for decades. Larry Summers, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, met Epstein when Summers was the president of Harvard, their friendship blossoming after the financier made a $6.5 million donation to the university. Richard Axel, a Nobel Prize winner in medicine in 2004, resigned from his multiple positions at Columbia University after it came to light that the two had been linked since the 1980s.

Epstein met supermodel Naomi Campbell around 2001, and she invited him to her exclusive 40^th birthday party in Cannes in 2010 and sent emails asking to see him in 2015, although her lawyers say that she didn’t know that he had been accused of sexual assault.

Some of the public figures that have been linked to the case say they met the pedophile long before the first allegations against him were made public, like former U.S. president Bill Clinton, who took several trips in Epstein’s private jet between 2002 and 2003. It’s a similar case with Donald Trump, who also appears in the database, met the pedophile in the ‘80s and was a very close friend of his. Trump, who has been implicated in the scandal through photos he took with the multi-millionaire and allegations of abuse that authorities did not follow up on, says that their relationship ended in 2004.

16 cases with legal consequences

The publication of the Epstein files has led to an avalanche of consequences in more than a dozen countries, which are now investigating whether any of his abuses took place in their territory. Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Turkey, Slovakia and Ireland are among them. At least 16 people related to Epstein have faced some kind of legal consequence, like judicial proceedings and lawsuits. Another 56 have encountered either personal or professional impacts.

In the United Kingdom, the multi-millionaire’s close relationship with the former Prince Andrew — and Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson — created one of the worse crises in the history of the British royal family. Meanwhile, the friendship between the pedophile and Britain’s former ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, put the Keir Starmer’s administration on the ropes. Two members of the Labour government have even resigned, despite having no connection whatsoever to Epstein: Morgan McSweeney, chief of staff, and Tim Allan, director of communications.

The pedophile’s tentacles also extended to France, where the Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into former Minister of Culture Jack Lang, his daughter Caroline and diplomat Fabrice Aidan, whose case is also being examined by the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Lang was forced to resign as the director of the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute), a public organization based in Paris, as a result of his relationship with Epstein.

In Norway, there was fallout from the Epstein case for crown princess Mette-Marit, who was forced to issue a public apology after her relationship with the sexual criminal became public. More serious consequences have befallen former prime minister Thorbjorn Jagland, who has been charged with aggravated corruption, and the diplomat Mona Juul, who resigned from her post as ambassador to Jordan and Iraq, and who has also been charged with corruption. Former foreign minister Borge Brende resigned in February as director of the World Economic Forum, after an internal investigation was launched into his ties with the American financier.

EL PAÍS has also identified 14 academics whose careers have been damaged through their relationship with Epstein, half of them tied to Harvard. That institution opened an investigation against various affiliates when their connection to the pedophile were exposed. Among them are Hasty Pudding Institute president Andrew Farkas, physics professor Andrew Strominger and donor Gerald Chan. The university also took action against Martin Nowak by shutting down the Evolutionary Dynamics Program, which he had founded with funds from Epstein. Joichi Ito, former director of the MIT Media Lab, ceased to be a visiting professor at Harvard.

Other academics who were fired due to the files’ publication were Columbia’s Letty Moss-Salntijn, Yale’s David Gelernter and Bard College’s Leon Botestein. Thomas J. Pritzker, the former president of Hyatt Hotels, and Jes Staley, who was director of Barclays until 2021, also left their positions after their ties to Epstein became public.

Years after Epstein’s suicide and months after Trump promised the publication of all files related to his case, Ghislaine Maxwell is the only individual serving a criminal sentence as accomplice to his atrocities. There are still millions of documents left to declassify, several ongoing investigations — and more than 1,000 victims waiting for justice to be served.