By Gianluca Lo Nostro
PARIS, Feb 6 (Reuters) – Pressure rose on Friday on former French culture minister Jack Lang to resign as president of the Arab World Institute over his ties to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after the foreign ministry summoned him to discuss the matter.
Lang said earlier this week he had been unaware of Epstein’s 2008 sex-offence conviction when they met in around 2012, describing the financier as an acquaintance interested in art and cinema introduced to him by U.S. film-maker Woody Allen.
The 86-year-old former minister, head of the Arab World Institute since 2013, has not been accused of wrongdoing. Lang told BFMTV on Wednesday that Epstein was not a friend, that he knew little about the convicted sex offender, but had found him to be “passionate about art, culture and cinema.”
But files released by the U.S. Department of Justice last week raise questions about Lang’s characterisation of his relationship with Epstein.
They show Epstein and Lang corresponding intermittently between 2012 and the financier’s 2019 death by suicide in jail.
In an email sent by Lang to Epstein on April 7, 2017, nearly a decade after the financier was convicted of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, he thanked Epstein for a “splendid time” the previous day.
“Your friendship, the amazing pl=ne (sic)m and your extraordinary generosity really touched us,” Lang wrote.
Lang, who served multiple terms as culture and education minister between 1981 and 2002, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
LANG URGED TO ‘THINK ABOUT THE INSTITUTION’
A source close to President Emmanuel Macron said the presidency and prime minister’s office had asked relevant ministers to summon Lang and encourage him to “think about the institution.” The foreign ministry said it had summoned Lang to a meeting on Sunday.
The Arab World Institute is a cultural and research institution that promotes understanding of the Arab world and is located in Paris on the banks of the Seine river.
Lang’s name appears over 600 times in the Epstein files, according to a Reuters review of the documents.
“I fear nothing, and I am clean as a whistle,” Lang told French radio RTL on Wednesday.
The files dump has heightened scrutiny of Epstein’s global connections with public figures, including Britain’s Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the younger brother of King Charles, and Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to the United States.
On Monday, Lang’s daughter Caroline resigned as head of France’s Independent Production Union after her own links to Epstein surfaced.
Both father and daughter deny wrongdoing, with Caroline telling BFMTV on Thursday she only knew about Epstein’s 2008 conviction after he told her to look him up on Google in 2014.
(Reporting by Gianluca Lo Nostro, Elizabeth Pineau, John Irish and Dominique Vidalon in Paris; editing by Richard Lough and Mark Heinrich)
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