On January 30, the US Department of Justice released a large body of material from the Jeffrey Epstein case: more than 3 million pages, about 2,000 videos, and 180,000 images. The published records included letters, internal notes, and other documents that renewed scrutiny of his contacts in financial, political, and religious circles.
In one letter dated February 21, 2013, addressed to former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Epstein wrote about changes in the Vatican and described the Institute for the Works of Religion as an important and opaque financial jurisdiction. The letter referred to Benedict XVI’s resignation, the appointment of Ernst von Freyberg, and former bank head Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. Later, under Pope Francis, thousands of suspicious accounts held by non-citizens of the Vatican were closed.
The released material also includes references to Epstein’s contacts with Catholic organizations in the United States. The documents say he financed children’s Catholic camps in the US Virgin Islands through a charitable foundation, and that letters of thanks were sent to him even after his earlier conviction in Florida. According to the FBI indictment, between 1999 and 2005 Epstein paid at least 40 underage girls for “massages” that often involved sexual acts.
After his arrest in July 2019 in the United States, prosecutors were preparing additional charges linked to his island, Little Saint James, which appeared in testimony about sexual exploitation. A month later he died in his jail cell, and in 2021 only his associate Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in the case.
The document trove also contains references to Russia and the Orthodox sphere. The article notes Epstein’s trips to Russia in the late 1990s, his correspondence with Sergei Belyakov, and a letter from attorney Jennifer Freeman dated October 2019 mentioning a victim who said she had suffered abuse by an Orthodox clergyman whose name was redacted.
Particular attention in Russia was drawn to information about a domed structure on Epstein’s island and his interest in religious relics. Against that backdrop, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian officials interpreted the files as evidence involving influential Western circles and child trafficking. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called what had happened “satanism,” while church commentators offered their own readings of the dossier.