Jeffrey Epstein’s story is more than sex abuse. It’s also about corporate corruption | Opinion
Various financial scandals come to mind when one thinks of corporate corruption. Since those companies are the repositories of much of the wealth of our country, their insiders sometimes loot them by various schemes that involve sham transactions or insider trading. But with the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein back in the news — as the Trump administration variously claims it will make public all the information about his life and strange death, or that there’s nothing more to see here — Epstein’s case shows that egregious wrongdoing in the business world can take forms other than monetary fraud.
Epstein claimed to have a day job as a financial adviser to wealthy individuals, a position he apparently achieved by parlaying his role as a math teacher at an exclusive private school into contracts with rich people. That led him to work in investment banking and the salacious, criminal activity he pursued, providing women and children to members of his elite clientele for their sexual pleasure.
How deeply Epstein’s perverse ways permeated the corporate world became apparent in a lawsuit filed several years ago against L Brands, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret, and its officers and directors. The lead defendant there was Leslie Wexner, the company’s founder and CEO who had built a high-end retail empire.
That legal action was based on credible reports that laid bare a shockingly hostile environment at the women’s apparel company where top male executives routinely sexually harassed female models. Those employees were allegedly often subject to lewd verbal comments as well as unwanted touching and groping.
In the suit, a photographer employed by Victoria’s Secret was also accused of sexual misconduct by having the women pose in the nude, and then selling books of those pictures. Wexner himself reportedly made demeaning comments to his models, and the suit alleged that when the company’s vice president of public relations complained about this reprehensible activity, she was summarily fired.
Epstein’s connection to Victoria’s Secret also came out in the legal action. He came to dominate much of Wexner’s life as his financial adviser. Interviews and public documents detail how Wexner let him have far-reaching control over his investment and philanthropic activities. In that regard, Wexner gave him power of attorney, and in addition to managing Wexner’s wealth, Epstein developed part of the town where the CEO lived and oversaw the building of his yacht.
But Epstein’s involvement with the company deviated into other questionable behavior. He often attended the company’s fashion shows — including at least one Trump attended — and hosted parties for aspiring models at his home in New York, claiming to be a recruiter for Victoria’s Secret. One woman charges that he told her he was a talent scout for the company and led her to a hotel room, where she was to audition for its catalog. But he grabbed and manhandled her there, she says, causing her to flee in tears.
Epstein owned a private island in the Virgin Islands where he hosted parties for prominent people with underage girls to ingratiate himself with them. His companion and now convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell has said that buildings there were wired with a video surveillance system for possible blackmail purposes. One of Epstein’s accusers says spy cameras were everywhere in his ranch in New Mexico.
Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 for procuring a child for prostitution, but that apparently did not dampen his close personal friendship with Wexner, nor his continuing association with Victoria’s Secret. He continued to run the scandalous operations on his island until he was arrested in July 2019 for sex trafficking of minors. A month later, he died in his jail cell, and the medical examiner ruled it death by suicide.
Epstein’s connection to Victoria Secret is another chapter in the annals of corporate corruption, albeit a strange twist in what are routinely financial crimes. The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have proposed cuts to funding of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal agency that is charging with policing such misconduct. But the Epstein matter should encourage public authorities to restore and reinvigorate the SEC, along with other government agencies that protect the public from these and other types of harmful activity.