The Epstein Files Leakage: Transparency, Controversy, and the Implications for Global Accountability

Abstract

The Epstein Files leakage explored in this paper is one of the most significant events in the context of the debate on transparency and accountability at a global scale. The discovery exposed so-called webs of elite power and institutional contraventions, and cast into doubt how the legal, political and the media system deal with the misdeed of mighty individuals. The research mentions transparency as a way of revealing the flaws in governance, the morality of actions of the media and due process and the final implications of loss of public confidence and responsibility over the elites. With a multidisciplinary qualitative design, the study also finds that despite the possibility of accountability being cultivated by information leakages, it also points to a severe deficiency of accountability in the international mechanism on accountable actions where justice is actually the pressure of the masses, media-driven framing, and inflexible legal standards. The Epstein Files can, therefore, be referred to as structural problem to accountability systems in the online era.