Quebec Pension Giant Pauses Deals With DP World Over Epstein Emails

La Caisse, the Quebec state pension fund and Canada’s second largest, said Tuesday that it will pause new investments alongside Dubai-based port operator DP World because of the ties between the company’s chairman and chief executive, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, and the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, according to Al Jazeera. “We have made it clear to the company that we expect it to shed light on the situation and take the necessary actions,” the fund said, in wording reported by Al Jazeera, CNBC and the Associated Press.

La Caisse is not an owner of DP World. The Associated Press reported that the fund is not an investor in the company but has invested alongside it in port projects around the world, and Al Jazeera quoted the fund as saying it is not a shareholder in the parent company and that it sees bin Sulayem as the focus of the situation. DP World, which runs Dubai’s Jebel Ali port and operates terminals in ports worldwide, had not responded to requests for comment, according to Al Jazeera, CNBC and the Associated Press.

The decision follows the U.S. Justice Department’s release of millions of pages of Epstein files. CNBC reported that thousands of search results for bin Sulayem’s name appear to be emails between him and Epstein from about 2007 to 2019, and the Associated Press reported that some reference pornography, sexual massages and escorts. In a 2009 email that Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, posted on Monday, Epstein wrote that he “loved the torture video”; the recipient’s name was redacted and the reply said the sender was in China. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche responded that the name was unredacted elsewhere in the files. CNBC and the Associated Press both note that the emails do not appear to implicate bin Sulayem in Epstein’s crimes, and that being named in the files is not evidence of wrongdoing.

The fight over the redactions reached the House floor on Tuesday. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, read the names of six men whose identities had been redacted, among them bin Sulayem and the retail billionaire Leslie Wexner, according to Al Jazeera and CBS News. Khanna and Massie found the names after reviewing unredacted files at the Justice Department, and Khanna said the department had shielded wealthy and powerful people “for no apparent reason.” Khanna did not allege specific criminal wrongdoing by any of the six. Blanche said some of the men were unrelated to Epstein and accused Massie of grandstanding, CBS News reported. Wexner has said he was unaware of the crimes for which Epstein was later charged, according to CNBC and Al Jazeera.

Behind the argument is a statute. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Trump signed in November, requires the department to release its Epstein records but allows redactions to protect survivors’ identities and in a few other circumstances, according to Al Jazeera and CBS News. A Justice Department spokesperson said bin Sulayem’s name appears more than 4,700 times in the files, NBC News and CBS News reported. Before running DP World, bin Sulayem chaired Dubai World, the conglomerate that included the developer Nakheel, according to CNBC and the Associated Press.