There's a TV series from Belgium called "Salamander" about a Belgium Private Bank and its influence on Belgian politics. It's in Flemish (Dutch language) on Amazon Prime, with English subtitles. The first season in 12 parts which build gradually to flesh out a nefarious network of compromised individuals.
Here's the plot synopsis from Wikipedia:
Jonkhere, a small private bank in Brussels, is robbed and 66 safe deposit boxes belonging to a number of the most prominent public figures in Belgium are cleaned out. The owners want to keep the thefts under wraps, presumably to avoid scandal. Police Inspector Paul Gerardi (Filip Peeters) carries out the investigation. He discovers the connection; that the victims are members of a secret organisation called Salamander. This is a cabal of the country's industrial, financial, judicial and political elite; the safe-deposit boxes contained secrets as far back as World War II. Gerardi becomes the target of both the criminals and the authorities.
In the last 10 years I have become familiar with some of the control mechanisms exerted on industry and government leaders, usually at the pivot points, but often also the person behind the face of power.
For example promising law students are lured into parties by their professors where compromising situations are set up for recording, to be used and levers later on. The BAR association is also a control point in that they control the liability insurance of a BAR registered attorney, and the very exams they take. Those with large student loans are even more vulnerable, because if they don't submit they lose their income to payback those loans and the very job they took those loans out for. So next time you hear people bitching about forgiving student loans, the control systems don't want that control point tether removed. Under current US Law you can't be free of a student loan if you no longer have the income to service it. Most corruption occurs for two things, to pay off a mortgage or finance a retirement. It's often that banal at the lower levels.
We all learned a lot about the black mail operation ostensibly run by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. No clients have been arrested and their identities begrudgingly released by the judicial system. But we are also lead to believe this is some kind of one off system dreamed by these two deviants, with hints of trails to the CIA and/or the Mossad.
I do remember the high flying financier Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine's father, from the time I lived in England and his mysterious death on his yacht. At the time Maxwell was a rival of Rupert Murdock, who is still around operating newspapers and TV news networks like SKY. I don't mean to imply Murdock was involved in Maxwell's demise, I don't think he was, merely they operated in that same niche of finances in the UK.
This video interviewing Eric Weinstein points out how Jeffrey Epstein was more of construct, a cut out, than a human being who made his wealth on Wall Street (although that is likely how we got his bribe money). When you ask the average person mostly what they remember is that Jeffrey purportedly had an egg shaped penis, and owned Little St James Island in the Virgin Islands.
