Finance
Epstein waged a years-long quest to meet Putin and talk finance
Jeffrey Epstein was on a mission to meet with Vladimir Putin when an intriguing proposal dropped into his email.
The Russian president was ready to receive Epstein, according to an October 2014 message from a correspondent on a database of more than 3.5 million files belonging to the late convicted sex offender that have roiled global politics and business.
“I spoke t= Putin,” wrote the interlocutor, whose identity has been redacted by the US Department of Justice. “He would be very glad if you were to visit and explain=financial markets in the 21 st century. Digital currency. derivative= structured finance. I would set up the meeting when you are next in=Europe. I am sure you two will like each other.”
Hours later, Epstein forwarded the message with a request for advice to Kathy Ruemmler, who’s stepping down as Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s general counsel after details of her association with the disgraced financier emerged in the files released by the Justice Department.
In his response, Epstein anticipated that her advice would be not to go “for the moment” and that was in fact the case. Ruemmler’s reply was brief: “Yes my answer is still the same,” she wrote. “Your fun i= denied.”
The caution at that point was understandable. Months earlier, Putin had sent Russian troops to annex Crimea from Ukraine, prompting wide-ranging US and European Union sanctions and sparking the geopolitical crisis that has since spiraled into the largest conflict in Europe since World War II.
Epstein’s fascination with Putin and Russia was undimmed, though, even as the documents paint a picture of a man who appeared largely clueless about who had genuine power and influence with the Kremlin leader. The files show a years-long effort to secure a one-on-one meeting with Putin, whose name appears about 1,000 times in the database.
The emails are quoted here as they appear in the DOJ release, including spelling and grammatical errors.
Ultimately, it seems, his quest was unsuccessful. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin never met Epstein as far as he’s aware, and no evidence has emerged so far to show that they did.
Earlier that year, in January, Epstein pitched former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland as the politician apparently prepared to meet with Putin in Sochi. The Russian Black Sea resort was shortly to host the 2014 Winter Olympics, the most expensive in history as Putin lavished $50 billion to present the games as a showcase of his country’s post-Soviet restoration.
Sport wasn’t on Epstein’s mind. “you can explain to putin , that there should be a sopshiticated russian version of bitcoin,” he wrote. “it would be the most advanced financial instrument availbale on a global basis.”
Jagland was among the most prominent European politicians at the time as secretary general of the Council of Europe for a decade between October 2009 and September 2019. Jagland met Putin on May 20, 2013, according to the Kremlin’s website, and returned to Sochi in 2014 for the opening of the Olympics.
On May 8, 2013, Epstein asked Jagland to secure him an audience with the Russian leader. “I know you are going to meet putin on the 20th, He is desperate to engage western investment in his country,” the financier wrote. “I have his solution. He needs to securitize russian investment, that means the govt takes the first loss.”
Epstein went on: “I recoginize that there are human rights issues that are at the forefront of your trip howver, if it is helpful to you, I would be happy to meet with him sometime in June and explain the solution to his top prioirty, I think this would be good for your goals. exchange somehting he really wants. for someting you want.”
In a further exchange a few days later, Jagland told Epstein “all this is not easy for me to explain to Putin. You have to do it. My job is to get a meeting with him.”
Epstein replied that Putin “is in a unique position to do something grand, like sputnik did for the space race.” He added: “I would be happy to meet with him , but for a minimum of two to three hours, not shorter.”
Apparently, a counter-offer came from Moscow that failed to enthuse Epstein. On May 21, he claimed in a message to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak that Putin had proposed a meeting during the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum the following month.
“I told him no,” Epstein wrote to Barak. “If he wants to meet he will need to set aside real time and privacy, lets see what happens.”
Days earlier, on May 9, referring to Putin, Epstein admitted to the Israeli politician that “I never met him.”
Two years later, in 2015, Barak wrote to thank Epstein for arranging his own participation at the St. Petersburg forum, where he said he held meetings with Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as well as the heads of the country’s two largest banks, Herman Gref of Sberbank and VTB Bank’s Andrey Kostin.
A spokesperson for Barak didn’t immediately offer comment.
As early as November 2010, Epstein was boasting to an unidentified correspondent that he had “a friend of Putin,s” who could help him secure a Russian visa, in response to an apparent party invitation.
Epstein noted on an application form for a year-long Russian visa in 2011 that he’d been issued with visas every year but one between 2002 and 2007, and had traveled to the country. It’s unclear from the files how many times he made use of the visas to visit Russia, though they indicate he made repeated plans to go there.
In April 2018, he received an email advising that his Russian visa was expiring and he’d need an official invitation letter to “renew for a 3 year business visa.” The visa was subsequently issued in June.
Epstein sent more emails to Jagland asking about meetings with Putin until June 2018. That last message, about a month before Putin held his first summit with US President Donald Trump in Helsinki, was the most concise.
“Would love to meet with Putin,” Epstein wrote.
Norwegian authorities started a corruption probe into Jagland this month over his links to Epstein.
Jagland is “fully cooperating with the police and has provided a detailed account of all relevant matters,” his lawyer, Anders Brosveet, said in a statement, declining to comment further. “He denies all charges against him.”
Trump’s election in 2016 gave Epstein more opportunity to cultivate Russian contacts, presenting himself as someone who could explain the political newcomer. This is what Epstein did during Trump’s first term, telling foreign officials how best to deal with the new president, according to one person who knew him at that time, asking not to be identified because the matter is sensitive.
One, apparently, was Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations in New York until his death in February 2017. Epstein claimed to Jagland that he’d coached the late Churkin on how to talk to Trump, and suggested he tell Putin that Lavrov could also “get insight on talking to me.”
Writing in June 2018, Epstein said: “churkin was great . he understood trump after =ur conversations. it is not complex. he must=be seen to get something its that simple.”
According to the DOJ files, Epstein also had regular contact with Sergei Belyakov, a former deputy economy minister and a graduate of Russia’s FSB security service who was involved in organizing the St. Petersburg economic forum. In one 2015 email, Epstein described him as a “very good guy.”
Belyakov didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Epstein bragged about his own FSB connections in another 2015 message to an unknown contact that he’d accused of attempting to blackmail him.
“I felt it necessary to contact some friends in FSB, and I though did not give them your name,” Epstein wrote. “So i expect never ever to hear a threat from you again.”
–With assistance from Ott Ummelas and Dan Williams.
TORONTO — Insurance provider Intact Financial Corp. says it had higher catastrophe losses and large losses in the second quarter than it initially expected.
Intact Financial reported that its combined catastrophe and large losses were $247 million above its expectations for the second quarter on a pre-tax and net of reinsurance basis.
The combined higher losses amount to $1.08 per diluted common share after tax.
Total catastrophe losses reached $416 million on a pre-tax basis during the second quarter and net of reinsurance.
The company says catastrophe losses in Canada were due to weather events, while commercial fires drove losses in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Intact Financial says the increase in large losses included higher-frequency fire claims as well as other property losses across different geographies.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 8, 2026.
Companies in this story: (TSX: IFC)
The Canadian Press
For a company navigating one of the most consequential transformations in its history, financial clarity is not optional—it is essential. Natura &Co, the Brazilian personal care and cosmetics group behind iconic brands such as Natura and Avon, has long been committed to combining purpose-driven business with commercial performance. After a period of strategic portfolio reshaping, including the divestiture of its Aesop and The Body Shop holdings, the company is now sharpening its focus on profitability and operational excellence across Latin America and global markets.
At the center of that effort sits a deceptively complex challenge: understanding, in real time, which revenue and cost factors are driving or eroding gross margin across a highly diversified business. For years, answering that question meant manual reporting, delayed insights, and finance teams spending valuable time on data gathering rather than analysis.
That’s now changing, thanks to a co-innovation initiative developed together with SAP and Numen, a global SAP partner specializing in digital transformation and enterprise software implementation.
From manual reporting to proactive decision intelligence
The project’s goal was to replace a labor-intensive gross margin analysis process with a generative AI application embedded directly into Natura &Co’s financial workflows. Built on SAP Business AI Platform, SAP’s unified foundation integrating business technology, data, and AI capabilities, the application connects directly to data in SAP S/4HANA to provide finance teams with automated insights and narrative recommendations in real time, without the need for manual data pulls or offline reporting.
The application enables users to explore revenue, cost, and margin drivers interactively, identifying at a glance which elements are protecting or eroding margin performance across markets and product lines. Crucially, human oversight remains central to the design: the AI application generates insights, while finance professionals retain full control over interpretation and decisions.
“The implementation of gross margin analysis using AI in SAP S/4HANA marked an inflection point in the analytical capability of our finance area,” said Rogério Dias Garcia, tech manager, ERP Latam, Natura &Co. “We overcame delays and raised the standard of insights by integrating margin analysis from SAP S/4HANA with a large language model connected via the SAP AI Core layer. This architecture allowed us to provide, in an agile, secure, and completely anonymous manner, a stratified and precise view of gross margin offenders and protectors—discriminating exactly which revenue or cost elements were driving market performance.”
A collaborative architecture for scalable AI adoption
Natura &Co’s application derived from a prototype SAP partner Numen created in early 2024 at SAP’s global Hack2Build on business AI, leveraging the generative AI capabilities of SAP Business AI Platform. The solution was designed and developed through close collaboration between Natura &Co, Numen, and SAP. From the outset, the approach was to align AI adoption with concrete business priorities, ensuring the application would be scalable and production-ready rather than a standalone prototype.
Numen brought deep SAP implementation expertise to the project, combining knowledge of SAP S/4HANA architecture with hands-on experience in building solutions on SAP Business AI Platform. The technology stack—SAP S/4HANA, SAP AI Core, SAP Fiori, and SAP Business Technology Platform—provided the secure, integrated foundation needed to connect financial data with generative AI capabilities in an enterprise context.
“SAP enabled the transformation by providing the technological foundation and expert support,” said Carlos Aravechia, head of Data Design & Intelligence at Numen.
The success of the project has validated a broader conviction at Natura &Co: that generative AI, embedded directly in ERP workflows, can fundamentally reposition finance from a transactional function to a strategic business partner.
A blueprint for other businesses
The Natura &Co project demonstrates a pattern that other organizations can replicate, particularly those running SAP S/4HANA. The combination of structured ERP data with the contextual reasoning capabilities of large language models creates a foundation for decision intelligence that goes well beyond traditional business intelligence tools.
The project was built within a six-month co-innovation sprint and went live in August 2025. It is currently in use across Natura &Co’s Equador operations.
Looking ahead, Natura &Co is already planning the next phase: integrating Joule Agents to further automate the extraction of standard analytical content and deepen the AI-driven optimization of financial processes.
“The success of this initiative validates the transformative potential of embedded AI within our ERP,” Dias Garcia noted. “We are now ready to move forward—deepening these insights and integrating the capability of Joule Agents to maximize the extraction of standard content and further optimize our business decisions.”
For SAP customers evaluating how to move from AI experimentation to AI in production, the Natura &Co project offers a concrete, replicable model: start with a high-value, well-defined business process, embed AI directly into existing workflows, and build in human oversight from the start.
A girl from a disadvantaged rural family in central China topped this year’s gaokao, attracting numerous live-streamers eager to finance her education, which she declined.
The home of 18-year-old secondary school graduate Han Yaping in a Henan province village was recently bustling with live-streamers.
This attention came after Han achieved an impressive score of 699 out of 750 in the gaokao, China’s national college entrance exam.
She has received offers from China’s two leading universities, Tsinghua University and Peking University.
Han’s accomplishment is particularly remarkable given her family’s impoverished circumstances.
Her mother suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory arthritis affecting the spine, preventing her from working. Her father, who earns a living through farming and odd jobs, serves as the family’s sole provider. Han also has a younger sister.
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