The Epstein files reveal an alarming new normal for corporate America

Two weeks after the U.S. Justice Department’s latest batch of 3 million Jeffrey Epstein files revealed the business elite—from Hollywood to New York to Dubai—who were friendly with the late, disgraced financier, the corporate world is still sifting through his murky paper trail. And boards and business leaders are facing tricky questions as they decide how to dole out consequences for executives who were Epstein’s close confidantes even after he was convicted of sex crimes in 2008 and registered as a sex offender. 

Among the thorny questions they’re asking: Who knew what, when? Did an executive commit a crime or just exhibit bad judgement? And to what standard do we hold leaders in a society that has developed a high tolerance for scandal? 

Now, we are starting to get answers—and some corporate heads are starting to roll. 

On Thursday, Goldman Sachs said general counsel Kathryn Ruemmler will leave the bank in June after the documents showed she stayed in close contact with Epstein until 2019, at one point calling him “Uncle Jeffrey” as she thanked him for high-end gifts. And on Friday, Dubai-based logistics group DP World named a new chair and new CEO, signaling the departure of Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem whose emails with Epstein included references to sexual experiences. Both ousters followed earlier resignations in the U.K. public sector, namely those of former U.S. ambassador Peter Mandelson from the House of Lords and Morgan McSweeney, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s chief of staff who’d advised on Mandelson’s appointment.

But if Ruemmler and Sulayem have faced professional consequences for their association with Epstein, many others have not. The slow, cautious-to-the-point-of-tepid response of the business world to its leaders’ chummy correspondence with........

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