How businesses with ties to Jeffrey Epstein saw norms – and even share prices – suffer |
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.........