Adisturbing number of the oligarchs responsible for the mess we're in are not very smart. I realize that this seems like a minor complaint when so many of them are also evil, incompetent, and causing enormous amounts of human suffering. (Though perhaps it's better that they're dimly lit, because who knows how much worse things would be if they were truly evil geniuses?)
Near the beginning of " The Way We Live Now," Anthony Trollope's searing satire of high-society London in the eighteen-seventies, Madame Melmotte, the wife of Augustus Melmotte, a crooked parvenu financier who has burst onto the British social scene, hosts a ball at the couple's mansion in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair. Despite Melmotte's checkered past, many members of the London élite accept his invitation to the party, including many aristocrats, a newspaper editor, and Prince George, a member of the British Royal Family.
Many unanswered questions remain about the relationship between Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor - formerly Prince Andrew - and Jeffrey Epstein, but the former royal once said they were introduced by Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell, the British socialite who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex-trafficking underage girls for Epstein after pleading not guilty, and Mountbatten-Windsor are understood to have enjoyed a close friendship in the '90s and early 2000s, when they were regularly spotted together on the New York and London social scenes.
Despite his new status as a registered sex offender, Epstein retained the trappings of wealth and influence. He preserved his foothold in financial circles and rebuilt his relationships among billionaires and senior bankers. Al Jazeera has reviewed the latest documents published by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) on January 30, 2026, gathered during federal investigations into Epstein. The files shed new light on how, despite his conviction, he remained embedded within elite financial networks for years.
A new tranche of Epstein files has blasted its way through the worlds of media, politics, tech, academia, finance and Hollywood. High-profile individuals have once again been forced to explain their relationship with the billionaire financier and why exactly they sent that email, or what they were doing in that photo, in that place, at that time. There have been resignations in Norway, Slovakia, France, the UK and on Wall Street.