Former Culture Minister Jack Lang "proposed" his resignation from the Arab World Institute (IMA) on Saturday, AFP said after consulting a letter addressed to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The day before, an investigation was opened by the National Financial Prosecutor's Office for his alleged links with the American financier and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

Published on: 02/07/2026 - 6:22 p.m. Modified on: 02/08/2026 - 10:22 a.m.

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End of a week of tensions. The president of the Arab World Institute (IMA), Jack Lang, proposed his resignation on Saturday February 7. In a letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, which AFP was able to consult, he specifies that it could be done "during a future extraordinary board of directors". The Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot and the Élysée announce that they are taking “note” of this offer while Jack Lang is splashed in the Epstein affair.

“I propose to submit my resignation at the next extraordinary board meeting,” wrote the former Minister of Culture, when he was summoned to the Quai d’Orsay on Sunday. Friday, the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) opened a preliminary investigation for "laundering of aggravated tax fraud" concerning Jack Lang and his daughter Caroline.

“I take note of this,” declared Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, whose ministry oversees the IMA.

“I am launching the procedure to appoint his or her successor at the head of the IMA and I am convening a board of directors within 7 days which will appoint an interim president,” he added, returning to Paris after an international tour.

“Unprecedented and extremely serious” elements

At 86, the president of this prestigious French cultural institute will therefore hand over before the end of his fourth term, due to his links recently revealed by the publication at the end of January of millions of documents, a new part of the "Epstein files".

Accused of having maintained close ties with a man already convicted of soliciting a minor prostitute, the former minister of Culture, emblematic of François Mitterrand, initially resisted demands for resignation.

On Wednesday, he rejected any hypothesis of a departure from the IMA.

But pressure accelerated, first within the political class then up to the top of the State, when the Élysée and Matignon demanded his summons to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Jean-Noël Barrot declared that he reserved "all options" regarding the mandate of Jack Lang, describing the first elements of the affair as "unprecedented and extremely serious".

Initially summoned by the Quai d'Orsay on Sunday, Jack Lang will not go there, but has brought forward his return to Paris from abroad to Saturday evening, his entourage told the APF.

“Unfounded” accusations

The defense of the former minister has not evolved much. After having assumed his links with Jeffrey Epstein, then pleading naivety, he reaffirmed his innocence on Saturday.

“The accusations made against me are inaccurate and I will demonstrate it,” he assured in the letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

“I am delighted that justice is taking up this matter,” he also said, referring to the preliminary investigation opened Friday by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) against him and his daughter Caroline Lang for “laundering of aggravated tax fraud”, after “facts revealed by Mediapart”.

Based on new elements published by the American administration, the media reported financial links and common economic interests between the Lang family and the financier. According to the messages exhumed, the name of the former minister appears 673 times in the correspondence of the former American businessman who died in prison in 2019.

The two men notably negotiated the sale between them of a riad in Marrakech in 2015, and the messages continued in the following years. “Dear Jeffrey, (...) your generosity is infinite,” Jack Lang reportedly wrote in 2017. “Can I go overboard again?” he also asked, before asking the billionaire to transport him by car to a party organized outside Paris.

The former minister's daughter, Caroline Lang, resigned on Monday as head of a film producers' union after revelations about an "offshore" company that she founded in 2016 with the American businessman.

At the microphone of BFM TV on Saturday, before the resignation of the president of the IMA, the president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, denounced "the complacency of the political system and the media system with regard to Jack Lang".

In 1977, Jack Lang was one of the signatories of a petition defending sexual relations between adults and children, published in Le Monde but also in Libération. Having signed this petition “was bullshit”, he regretted in 2021.

With AFP

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