Steven Boykey Sidley: The other Jeffrey Epstein story

Key topics:Epstein’s abuse fuelled public outrage and criminal infamy.Elite network: billionaires, politicians, and academics engaged privately.Influence engineered via wealth advice, connections, and secrecy..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Steven Boykey Sidley*.The public narrative of Jeffrey Epstein is monolithic: a sexual predator who exploited young women for both his own satisfaction and that of others in his network. This story is true, horrific, and essential – and presumably much of its underbelly is still to be revealed. There is little I can add.But it exists alongside another parallel narrative – one that explains not only how he sustained his power after a Florida state conviction for sex crimes (soliciting and trafficking) in 2008, but why the world’s most powerful people kept walking through his door. How did a college dropout from Coney Island, with no institutional backing and no visible paper trail, become one of the most connected men in America, his previous crimes seemingly washed away?For a long period, Epstein had only one client, billionaire Les Wexner.The nature of their relationship remains opaque, but Epstein seems to have extracted more than $100 million from Wexner, even though he was reputed to have stolen from him and paid back at least some portion of it. (The relationship did not end after the theft, so one wonders about that). But two things emerged from this for Epstein: enough money to be taken seriously by rich people and a blue-chip billionaire providing both references and a fat Rolodex.Epstein’s subsequent rise lies not in finance but in a peculiar form of social engineering. Epstein built something unprecedented: a private salon where billionaires, heads of state, Nobel laureates and tech founders gathered to discuss wealth, science and power and how to manage their finances. His 50,000-square-foot (4,600 square metre) Manhattan mansion functioned as what journalist and author Michael Wolff (who spent time there in 2014), described in a profile he wrote at the time as “the world’s most rarefied economics class, often to many of the world’s finance ministers and foremost economists.”Wolff reports that the core of Epstein’s empire-of-influence was a stage-managed environment of exclusive access. Wolff described a “windowless” dining room of his “absurdly vast” Manhattan mansion, where Epstein held court. He created a “hermetic or stop-time sense,” a bubble insulated from a “levelled, angry age.” Here, amid household staff ferrying refreshments, he sat “in sweatshirt, draw-string pants and Palm Beach slippers”, surrounded by reading glasses, advising “a startling collection of the rich and powerful, slotted in on an hourly basis.”His proposition was a compelling solution to a novel problem. He argued that the generation of wealth created from the 1980s onward—through Wall Street derivatives, tech IPOs, and global finance—had outpaced the owners’ ability to manage it. As he told Wolff, his “long-time business thesis is that the rich know very little about money”. They were experts in their businesses, but the resulting fortunes were “an ultimate afterthought” requiring a different intellectual discipline.He was, he successfully argued, uniquely positioned to provide this discipline.Why, given his previous conviction and subsequent jail sentence, did a significant percentage of some of the world’s most powerful, rich and brilliant individuals repeatedly engage with him? Were they not somewhat appalled by his crime? Were they not eager to keep their distance?It seems not.Because of the conviction, Epstein had indeed become persona non grata in the institutional world of most investment banks and Wall Street giants. But the rarefied procession of big men that entered his Manhattan mansion were individuals who floated above mere corporate governance, the elite of elites. Epstein represented something special to them – objectivity. Wolff quotes Epstein as saying this:“At a certain level of finance, almost everyone is allied with an institutional interest. You are part of government, or you want to be in government, or you are connected to a bank or other portfolio, or you have key relationships with certain corporations or industries. Because of my situation, I have none of that. I have no institutional ties, which makes me, in some sense, one of the few wholly independent sources of information and actual honest brokers. That’s the usefulness of disgrace.”Epstein was apparently a mathematical genius and polymath, able to discuss advanced physics with physicists, complex finance with financiers and genetic engineering with biologists. Wolff hypothesised that he had an uncommon ability to identify patterns that others missed. Connecting Noam Chomsky with a celebrity lawyer for instance. Or a Saudi Prince with a needy tech billionaire. Epstein was the fixer, the broker, the trusted middleman. When your speed dial is the star chamber of global power, everyone comes to you for their networking requirements. It is a simple matter to insert yourself in deals that may emerge. Billions are within easy reach.Epstein also donated a lot of money, particularly to prestige colleges like Harvard and MIT, which is why the files revealed so many academic names. This donation-as-a-marketing-strategy was cheap and effective (not to mention important for the colleges which are on a constant lookout for this sort of philanthropy). They may have noticed an unsavoury incident in Epstein’s past, but perhaps they were not that concerned with what they presumed was a once-off non-federal crime.As Wolff noted, Epstein operated in “a two-tier understanding of the world.” For his clients, the media’s monstrous portrayal of him was “mostly bunk.” In their view, any prominent person could be similarly targeted. Associating with him, therefore, became a form of loyalty among those who believed they lived above conventional judgment. The very things that made him toxic to the public made him a trusted confidant to those fearing similar exposure.What made Epstein’s network so successful, ultimately, was his understanding that influence is not about what you know, but about the people whom you can connect with. He was a node in a network of extraordinary density, a facilitator of relationships between people who otherwise might never meet. In his dining room, Democrats and Republicans, scientists and politicians, billionaires and academics mingled in combinations that would have been impossible anywhere else.Who were these? Here is a partial list from the Epstein files (note that most of these people never visited Epstein Island). But most would (or should) have known about Epstein’s 2008 conviction..Technology.Bill Gates – Multiple meetings after 2008 conviction; discussed philanthropy and Gates Foundation expansionLeslie Wexner – Victoria’s Secret founder; Epstein’s primary client for 20 years, granted him power of attorneySergey Brin – Google co-founder; emails with Ghislaine Maxwell about dinners at Epstein’s mansionPeter Thiel – Venture capitalist; met Epstein multiple times from 2014, discussed tax and financial adviceReid Hoffman – LinkedIn co-founder; introduced Thiel to Epstein, numerous friendly email exchangesElon Musk – Referenced in files, though nature of relationship disputedMark Zuckerberg – Met Epstein at a dinner honouring scientists; says no subsequent contact)Mort Zuckerman – Real estate billionaire and Daily News publisherRon Baron – Hedge fund manager ($26bn under management)Josh Harris – Apollo Global Management co-founderSteven Sinofsky – Former Microsoft executive.Politics & Government.Bill Clinton – Former US President; flew on Epstein’s plane multiple timesDonald Trump – Socialised with Epstein in 1980s–2000sLarry Summers – Former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president; resigned from OpenAI board after files releasedEhud Barak – Former Israeli Prime Minister; regular visitorBill Richardson – Former New Mexico GovernorKevin Rudd – Former Australian Prime MinisterKathryn Ruemmler – Former Obama White House CounselSteve Bannon – Epstein advised him on his 2018 European political tour.Science & Academia.Stephen Hawking – Attended conference on Epstein’s islandMartin Nowak – Harvard mathematical biologist; Epstein funded his institute with $30 millionLawrence Krauss – Physicist; exchanged dozens of emails with EpsteinNoam Chomsky – Linguist; corresponded with Epstein even after 2008 convictionSteven Pinker – Harvard psychologist; flew on Epstein’s plane to TEDSeth Lloyd – MIT quantum computing researcherLisa Randall – Harvard physicist; flew on Epstein’s jet, visited his island.Legal.Alan Dershowitz – Harvard law professor; long-time friend and legal adviserKen Starr – Former Clinton prosecutor; part of Epstein’s legal teamRoy Black – Criminal defence attorney.Media & Other.Ghislaine Maxwell – Convicted co-conspiratorWoody Allen – Filmmaker; dined with EpsteinPrince Andrew – Named in court filings.The very source of his disgrace – the sexual abuse of young women – was not a separate scandal; it was the corrosive foundation. His belief that his utility to the powerful made him untouchable proved fatal. The outside world’s moral framework eventually breached the windowless dining room.The “other Epstein story” reveals more than one man’s vaulting ambition. It is a blueprint of how influence can be engineered at the highest levels: by identifying an unmet need (managing incomprehensible wealth), offering a unique product (disinterested, mathematically-grounded counsel), and connecting the powerful to the powerful in a protected social setting. When Epstein was finally arrested in 2019, his network fractured instantly. The relationships that had seemed so solid evaporated into denials and regrets. What remained was a question that still lingers over American power: how did so many smart people miss what was happening, or choose not to see it?The answer may lie in something Epstein understood better than anyone and which may be a sad axiom of all polities: at a certain altitude of wealth and influence, the normal rules cease to apply..*Steven Boykey Sidley is a professor of practice at JBS, University of Johannesburg..*This article was originally published by Daily Friend and has been republished with permission.

Steven Boykey Sidley: The other Jeffrey Epstein story

Related Stories

Former DiData bosses reject Goodall's admission as a product of his NTT settlement

Rebuilding the Fortress: Steven Brown on turning around one of the JSE's toughest situations

Strong fundamentals continue to power growth for Fortress Real Estate Investments

The Economist on Woke II: Nepo-baby socialists - America's left trades race for class