PARIS — Jack Lang, a former French culture and education minister, tendered his resignation from his position as the president of the Paris-based Arab World Institute after the latest revelations about his and his family’s financial ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot “took note of his resignation” and launched the procedure to replace him, according to a statement dated Saturday.

Lang, who first acknowledged financial ties to Epstein in a 2020 interview with POLITICO, was under mounting pressure after the prosecutor’s office for financial crimes opened a preliminary investigation for suspected “laundering of tax fraud proceeds” after French investigative outlet Mediapart reported the existence of an offshore fund based in the Virgin Islands and jointly held by Epstein and Lang’s daughter, Caroline Lang.

Caroline Lang was also to inherit $5 million in Epstein’s will, according to Mediapart. Caroline Lang told the outlet that the fund was to support emerging artists and that she knew nothing of the will.

“The accusations against me are inaccurate, and I will prove it, beyond the noise and fury of the media and digital courts,” Lang said in his resignation letter sent to Barrot. Contacted by POLITICO, Lang shared the resignation letter.

In the latest wave of Epstein correspondence released by the U.S. Justice Department, Lang appeared in a picture with Epstein outside of the Louvre, and shared by Epstein with Steve Bannon, former chief strategist for U.S. President Donald Trump. 

“Now at the pyramid,” Epstein wrote in March 2019. “With the entire govt.”

Epstein, a convicted sex offender, and the Lang family maintained a close relationship over the years, Jack Lang and his daughter admitted last week. Jack Lang told POLITICO last week that he “never knew of Epstein’s crimes.”

Jack Lang, 86, is a well known name in French politics and history after having served as culture minister under former President François Mitterrand in the 1980s and early 1990s, during which he initiated the renovation of the Louvre and the construction of the pyramid. He also launched the Fête de la musique, a fixture of France’s festive calendar celebrated on June 21.