The release of the Jeffrey Epstein files in early 2026 wasn’t just a scandal about one man. It was an unexpected window into the hidden architecture of American corporate power.
When the U.S. Department of Justice published more than 3 million pages of documents on Jan. 30, 2026, most of the media focused on the famous names. But the files also revealed something broader and more troubling. Epstein’s network had infiltrated the boardrooms of hundreds of major U.S. companies, with clear consequences for corporate misconduct affecting employees and the broader business culture.
I’m a scholar of corporate finance and governance who has studied the vast reaches of Epstein’s business connections. Fellow economists Marina Gertsberg, Ekaterina Volkova and I found that the disgraced financier effectively wired corporate America into a denser, more tightly interconnected network. Companies with more Epstein-connected directors registered measurably worse governance failures over time, regardless of their size or the prominence of their executives.
There’s a bigger point as well. Networks that appear valuable because they provide access and connectivity can also encourage a social environment with serious governance problems. The Epstein files revealed a network that was hidden, vast and tied to clearly disqualifying conduct.
A hidden architecture of elite connections
The vast majority of corporate connections to Epstein went unreported by the media. Following the files’ release, journalists understandably focused on the most prominent and sensational cases. In the two weeks after the news broke, my colleagues and I found that fewer than 1 in 4 companies with Epstein-connected directors were mentioned in the news.
Our research went much further. We searched the entire document load for the names of every CEO and board member who served at a publicly listed U.S. company between 2006 and 2026, which totaled 92,698 individuals. We then used artificial intelligence to classify each document match, distinguishing meaningful contact with Epstein from accidental mentions.
What we discovered was striking. More than 2,000 public-company directors had direct contact with Epstein, either through emails or in-person meetings. Of these, about 1,000 were part of five or more communications, the threshold we used to identify the most tightly connected individuals. And we found that companies with more Epstein-connected directors experienced much worse governance over time – measured through negative media attention about executive misconduct, fraud and corruption.
Using data from RepRisk – a company that systematically tracks corporate misconduct across media, regulatory and NGO sources – we discovered that every time a board added a director who had meaningful Epstein contact, it was associated with about 1.7 more governance failures per year. In addition, there were 3.4 more incidents that breached the environmental, sustainability and governance pledges of the director’s company.
Some of the best-known cases underscore this finding. Jes Staley, who privately described Epstein as one of his closest friends, resigned as CEO of Barclays in November 2021 after the bank disclosed a regulatory probe into that relationship and found he had misled investigators. Barclays then clawed back 17.8 million British pounds in awards, or about US$24 million, and the U.K. watchdog Financial Conduct Authority fined and banned him from working in financial services.
Tayfun Salci/Anadolu via Getty Images
Another example is Leon Black, who stepped down as chairman and CEO of Apollo Global Management in 2021 after an independent review found he had paid Epstein $170 million for tax and estate-planning advice, far more than initially disclosed. Apollo restructured its governance in the process.
There are also instances at the company level where connections to Epstein were followed by governance failures: Deutsche Bank paid a $150 million regulatory penalty for compliance issues tied to Epstein’s accounts, while JPMorgan Chase settled survivor claims for $290 million.
The effects were strongest for the most intensive connections. Directors who had documented in-person meetings with Epstein were 2.5 times more likely to be accused of misconduct, with 5.2 total incidents a year per connected director.
These aren’t just correlations. When an Epstein-connected director died during the period we studied – an event outside any firm’s control – their company subsequently saw a big drop in misconduct incidents in the years that followed. In short, this relationship reflected something real and causal, not just that badly governed firms were more likely to tolerate such connections in the first place.
These connections weren’t just associated with greater governance problems. In the cases where CEOs or board members were mentioned in Epstein-related news in the two weeks after the files’ January release, we found that their companies’ share prices also took a hit, falling about 3%. This tells us that investors considered Epstein contacts to be relevant for company valuations.
Too close for comfort?
Beyond individual firms, Epstein’s network reshaped the structure of corporate America itself. We found that board members in his network tended to cluster more tightly than nonconnected members.
When we mapped connections among board members, adding Epstein-mediated links increased the network’s density by 353%. In other words, it sharply reduced the degrees of separation among major companies by more than a factor of three. This increase in density is similar to what might be seen in other elite networks, such as graduating from an Ivy League school.
Before accounting for Epstein ties, the average connection between two businesses required more than two jumps between boards. Including the ties, they were typically separated by fewer than two.
The effect was especially pronounced in finance and technology, including giants such as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. In this sector, 32 of 50 companies had at least one Epstein-connected director, while network density increased by 550%. In tech, Epstein’s ties actually bridged two previously disconnected clusters of firms, joining Microsoft, Apple, Cisco and IBM into a single connected network. Manufacturing and healthcare, by contrast, were less affected.
It’s about norms, not just networks
A natural question is whether talking to Epstein simply suggests that person was well connected – and that firms try to put well-connected people on their boards.
To test this, we considered two scenarios. Under one, Epstein expanded executives’ access to elite contacts and opportunities, potentially benefiting their firms. Under the other, exposure to Epstein’s network spread a culture of boundary-crossing behavior, making questionable conduct seem more normal.
Our research points to the second explanation. If a company became more embedded and better connected within the Epstein network, it wasn’t associated with worse governance outcomes. But when boards outside that network had members who served on other boards with Epstein-connected directors, those indirect ties consistently predicted more misconduct incidents.
A full reckoning for many of these business, in terms of governance and reputation, may still lie ahead. But investors, board-nominating committees and regulators now have the data to ask harder questions about who sits in corporate boardrooms – and whose company they kept.
