Goldman Sachs chief legal officer and general counsel Kathryn Ruemmler (pictured) has resigned from her position following the recent revelations over her ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Ruemmler, who joined Goldman in 2020 and was promoted to GC a year later, has faced renewed scrutiny as the extent of her relationship with the convicted sex offender was brought to light in the latest release of the Epstein files.
Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem stepped down as CEO and chairman of Dubai-based logistics giant DP World after newly released U.S. Justice Department documents revealed explicit 2015 emails he sent to Jeffrey Epstein describing a sexual relationship with a young woman; the company announced that Yuvraj Narayan will serve as CEO and Essa Kazim as chairman as leadership changes take effect.
‘I Loved the Torture Video’: The Explicit Digital Trail of Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem and Jeffrey Epstein
With details emerging of visits to Little Saint James and unredacted sexual boasts, the DP World chief remains silent
The most shocking fallout involves the prominent Norwegian diplomat Mona Juul and her husband, Terje Rød-Larsen, both lauded as architects of the Oslo peace accords. The pair are now under investigation by Norway’s financial crimes squad, Økokrim, after it was reported that Epstein left the couple’s two children $10m in a will drawn up shortly before his death by suicide in 2019. Juul resigned from her post as ambassador to Jordan and Iraq on Sunday and is being probed on suspicion of gross corruption; her husband on suspicion of complicity in gross corruption.
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And a trove of emails spanning years suggests that ThorbjørnJagland, a former prime minister, foreign minister, Nobel peace prize chair and secretary-general of the Council of Europe may have accepted luxury holidays to Epstein’s Palm Beach resort and his private Caribbean island, sought personal loans and engaged in sexual banter with Epstein. Police at Norway’s economic crimes unit are investigating Jagland on suspicion of aggravated corruption. Jagland has denied wrongdoing and through lawyers says he is “confident of the outcome” of the investigation.
While Juul and Rød-Larsen have said through lawyers that they believe they will be cleared by the investigation, a vignette from 2017 illuminates the spectacular nature of the fall from grace of the pre-eminent power couple in Norwegian diplomatic circles over the past 40 years.
In April of that year, the play Osloopened on Broadway. It was a smash hit, and won a Tony award before transferring to the National Theatre in London; it was subsequently turned into a feature film. Oslo was a dramatisedsequel to the carefully crafted public nimbus surrounding Juul and Rød-Larsen. The husband and wife team made their careers in the 1990s by brokering secret negotiations between Israel and the PLO. The Norwegian commentariat had united in uncritical celebration of the resulting 1993 and 1995 Oslo accords, and of Rød-Larsen and Juul in particular. There were official hagiographies and honorary awards.
Later, there was controversy: in violation of Norwegian archival laws, the couple was accused of placing their Oslo archives at a safe distance from critical Norwegian researchers in closed Israeli archives.
But Rød-Larsen and Juul were depicted in the play as the Oslo accords’ chief protagonists, the heroic drivers of an extraordinary diplomatic achievement. The New York Times called the play a “colossus”.
At a special performance in New York in May 2017, Rød-Larsen personally came on stage on behalf of the IPI, which had sponsored the evening. In the audience was a guest of honour. The guest was Epstein, whom Rød-Larsen had brought in as a benefactor without the knowledge of the IPI’s board. Epstein’s money, we now know from the newly released emails, had paid for the event. Rød-Larsen would later describe Epstein in private texts as his “best friend”, “a great guy” and “deserving to be an angel”.
Three years later, Rød-Larsen resigned as the peace organisation’s CEOover revelations of a loan from Epstein.
Rød-Larsen is now suspected of having used his influence to help procure visas for Russian models to serve as “interns” at his publicly funded peace institute. One of them claims she was later among Epstein’s sexual abuse victims.
Bewilderingly for an erstwhile social democrat, Rød-Larsen, the emails suggest, may have made personal introductions to friends in the international power elite for Steve Bannon.
Note: Trump has a soft spot for Norwegians. He has said, since 2018:
Trump asked why there could not be some people from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, adding, “send us some nice people, do you mind?”
This is a reprise of reported comments by Trump in 2018 at that Oval Office meeting in which he had allegedly asked why there could not be more immigrants from Norway.
Oslo Accords figure deeply linked to Epstein network
Then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, then US president Bill Clinton, and then PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, at the White House in September 1993
Rabin was assassinated 2 years later:
Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, was assassinated on 4 November 1995 at 21:30, at the end of a rally in support of the Oslo Accords at Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
borderslynn 