The police in Britain arrested a member of the Royal Family and a former British ambassador to the United States on suspicion of misconduct in public office following the release of the Epstein files by the U.S. Department of Justice. The records disclose a global web of complicity from the political and corporate elite to the halls of renowned academic institutions as the alleged victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein continue to press for transparency and accountability.

1. Introduction

On November 18, 2025, the United States House of Representatives passed the Epstein Transparency Act. The Act was then passed by the United States Senate and signed by President Donald Trump the next day. (here) The brief statute, comprised of three sections, requires the U.S. Attorney General to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format” all unclassified records related to the investigation and prosecution of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein not later than thirty days after enactment. The Attorney General is also required to submit an unredacted “list of all government officials and politically exposed persons” named or referenced in the materials to the judiciary committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The records are housed in the Epstein Library, a site maintained by the U.S Department of Justice. (here)

Writing for The New York Times on February 12, 2026, Robert Draper said, “[t]he pages tell a story of a heinous criminal given a free ride by the ruling class in which he dwelled, all because he had things to offer them: money, connections, sumptuous dinner parties, a private plane, a secluded island and, in some cases, sex.” (here) Professor Nicole Hemmer, a history professor at Vanderbilt University, told Mr. Draper that, although the Epstein scandal had been brewing for years, people seemed shocked by “the scope of elite complicity” in Mr. Epstein’s world. “It’s a level of corruption that the public is now getting a full view of,” she said. Reporting for The Guardian on February 21, 2026, Victoria Bekiempis said the release of millions of files not only prompted questions about his crimes but renewed attention on the failure of authorities to stop him, “including time between his sweetheart plea deal in 2008 and federal arrest nearly six years ago.” (here)

According to the U.S. justice department, the Epstein files consist of over six million pages. Approximately 3.5 million files have been made public. It is important to emphasize that simply being mentioned in the files does not establish wrongdoing. And every person charged with an offence is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a fair trial. Only one person discussed in this post has been convicted. One person is presently charged with an offence. Others have been arrested or appear in records contained in the files and related commentary in the media. The individual cases serve to give dimension to the scope of Mr. Epstein’s orbit as revealed in the files that are now part of the public record and include royalty, political leaders, professionals and scholars associated with academic institutions.

2. Charges, Arrests and Probes

On Feruary 18, 2026, Le Monde reported that Paris prosecutors had opened two new investigations into potential sex abuse crimes and financial offences linked to Mr. Epstein following the release of files by the U.S. authorities. Each investigation will be conducted by a specialized magistrate. Paris prosecutor, Laurence Beccuau, expects the data will produce a “well-informed, very broad, panoramic view.” (here) The highest public figure affected by the Epstein files in France is former culture minister Jack Lang who resigned as head of the Arab World Institute in Paris amid suspicions of tax fraud. (here) Other prominent figures “embroiled in the files” include former Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland of Norway and Miroslav Lajčák, the national security advisor to Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. Mr. Jagland has been charged with “gross corruption” and Mr. Lajĉák resigned after the files showed email exchanges between him and Mr. Epstein. (here and here)

On February 19, 2026, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew, was arrested by Thames Valley police on suspicion of misconduct in public office. (here) He is suspected of disclosing confidential information to Mr. Epstein while serving as a British trade envoy between 2001 and 2011. He was detained for eleven hours and released without charge. His relationship with Mr Epstein goes back decades. In 2014, Virginia Giuffre said she was sex-trafficked to Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor by Mr. Epstein and his girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. In 2022, Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor settled a lawsuit with Ms. Giuffre in the United States for an undisclosed amount without admission of liability. Misconduct in public office is a common law offence in Britain that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. It has been criticized for ambiguity by the Crown Prosecution Service and the Law Commission. (here and here)

On February 23, 2026, Peter Mandelson, former British ambassador to the United States, was arrested by detectives investigating claims he also committed misconduct in public office during his friendship with Mr. Epstein. He was later released on bail. (here) The Metropolitan police in London have been probing allegations that Mr. Mendelson, “leaked Downing Street emails and market-sensitive information to the disgraced US financier during his time as business secretary.” He is not suspected of committing sex related offences. The allegations involving Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor and Mr. Mandelson rocked the Royal Family and the Starmer government. The Prime Minister acknowledged he knew Mr. Mandelson and Mr. Epstein were in contact after Mr. Epstein was jailed in 2008 for child sex offences. Both Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor and Mr. Mandelson have denied any wrongdoing.

Links to Mr. Epstein also run deep in the academic world including revered Ivy League universities Columbia, Harvard and Yale. (here) Seventy faculty members at Barnard College, affiliated with Columbia, published an open letter calling on the university to “acknowledge and investigate” correspondence between Mr. Epstein and Francine LeFrak, a member of the school’s board of trustees. Columbia disciplined Dr. Letty Moss-Salentijn, Vice Dean of the dental college, and Dr. Thomas Magnani, a member of the admissions review committee, after documents revealed they helped Mr. Epstein’s girlfriend get into the school. The academic community at UCLA was described as “reeling” over a “swath of email correspondence” between Dr. Mark Tramo, an adjunct professor of medicine, and Mr. Epstein over a span of twelve years. And former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will resign from teaching at Harvard while his ties to Mr. Epstein are investigated. (here)

On February 27, 2026, The New York Times and CNN published articles tracking people who have been impacted by the revelations. According to the Times, the latest release of files “set off global repercussions across politics, finance, entertainment and academia.” (here) The files were described by CNN as including court documents, emails and text messages as well as, “countless unverified claims and allegations collected by the FBI.” (here) The types of connections people had with Mr. Epstein vary widely from the superficial to friendships spanning decades. Although many faced “public blowback” during the years following his arrest in 2019 only one person has been convicted. Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in 2021 for her role in Mr. Epstein’s sex trafficking network and is serving a sentence of twenty years.

3. Crimes Against Humanity

On February 17, 2026, independent experts who serve under mandates from the United Nations Human Rights Council warned that, “the alleged acts documented in the files could amount to some of the gravest crimes under international law.” (here and here) The conduct could amount to sexual slavery, reproductive violence, enforced disappearance, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, and femicide. “So grave is the scale, nature, systematic character, and transnational reach of these atrocities against women and girls, that a number of them may reasonably meet the legal threshold of crimes against humanity,” they said. The experts went on to say the alleged crimes were committed against a backdrop of, “supremacist beliefs, racism, corruption, extreme misogyny, and the commodification and dehumanisation of women and girls from different parts of the world.”

The three core crimes of international criminal law are war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. The first prosecution for crimes against humanity took place during the Nuremberg trials against former leaders of Nazi Germany. The London Charter, which set up the Nuremberg Tribunal, defined crimes against humanity in Article 6(c) as, “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during war […]”. (here) They are not codified in an international treaty and have evolved mainly as part of customary international law. However, Article 7(1)(g) of the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court, has defined crimes against humanity to include, “[r]ape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity.” (here)

The U.N. human rights experts called for governments to act decisively “to hold perpetrators accountable” and “welcom[ed] steps by some governments to probe current and former officials and private individuals named in the files.” The call on governments, as opposed to international institutions, implicitly recognizes the definition of crimes against humanity in Article 7 of the Rome Statute. First, as Edmarverson A. Santos argued in a post to Diplomacy and Law, Article 7 does not criminalize isolated acts, only collective ones that are manifested as a course of conduct against civilians. “The inquiry must focus on whether the alleged conduct reveals an organized system implemented through coordination, structure, and sustained execution,” he said. Second, under sub-sec. (1) the alleged conduct must form part of a widespread or systemic attack. “Without satisfaction of this element,” Mr. Santos argued, “even repeated and severe criminal conduct remains within the domain of domestic or transnational organized crime.” (here)

4. Conclusion

The question that emerges from this saga is not why it has taken so long to gather momentum but that it has acquired any momentum at all. If I understand the alleged victims correctly, they seek two things – transparency and accountability. They demand other things too. But transparency and accountability are at the core of their advocacy. Why, then, has it taken over a decade for the Epstein scandal to pick up steam? The answer is only partly moored to the Epstein Transparency Act itself and the subsequent release of the unclassified records. The politics of legislation takes time to work itself out and the review of 3.5 million files added to the delay. But, Mr. Epstein was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008 and indicted for sex trafficking in 2019, the same year Ms. Giuffre accused Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor of rape. The answer lies buried somewhere in society’s indifference to elite complicity, indifference to a rich New York financier accused of trafficking young women for sex, indifference to lethargic investigations and, in the end, indifference to prosecutorial stagnation.