JPMorgan: U.S. Virgin Islands helped Jeffrey Epstein
JPMorgan Chase defended itself on Tuesday in opposition to a lawsuit by the U.S. Virgin Islands accusing it of empowering Jeffrey Epstein to abuse teenage ladies by arguing in courtroom papers that it was the islands, not the financial institution, that enabled the financier to commit his crimes.
Legal professionals for the financial institution stated within the Manhattan federal courtroom submitting that the federal government of the Virgin Islands was complicit, letting excessive rating officers be purchased off by Epstein and actively working with him whereas “reaping the advantages of his wealth.”
“He gave them cash, recommendation, affect, and favors. In trade, they shielded and even rewarded him,” offering profitable tax breaks price thousands and thousands of {dollars}, they wrote.
Most troubling, they stated, was that officers from the islands “protected Epstein, fostering the right circumstances for Epstein’s prison conduct to proceed undetected.”
The attorneys added: “For 20 years, and for lengthy after JPMC exited Epstein as a consumer, the entity that almost all immediately failed to guard public security and most actively facilitated and benefited from Epstein’s continued prison exercise was the plaintiff on this case — the USVI authorities itself.”
The Virgin Islands, the place Epstein had an property, sued JPMorgan final yr, saying its investigation revealed that the monetary companies large enabled Epstein’s recruiters to pay victims and was “indispensable to the operation and concealment of the Epstein trafficking enterprise.”
Of their submitting Tuesday, the financial institution’s attorneys stated Virgin Islands officers regarded the opposite approach when Epstein went by means of its airports with ladies and younger ladies as he donated generously to political campaigns. The attorneys stated officers have been lenient with necessities that he register as a intercourse offender, doing inspections of his residence that have been “cursory at finest.”
“In sum, in trade for Epstein’s money and items, USVI made life simple for him,” the attorneys stated. “The federal government mitigated any burdens from his intercourse offender standing. And it made positive that nobody requested too many questions on his transport and maintaining of younger ladies on his island.”
Parts of the submitting have been closely redacted. It requested Decide Jed Rakoff to reject the islands’ makes an attempt to forestall the financial institution from utilizing defenses at trial that may expose the islands’ function in Epstein’s dealings.
The attorneys wrote that “alleged damages have to be balanced in opposition to the appreciable advantages that USVI reaped from its facilitation of Epstein’s crimes.”
Legal professionals for the U.S. Virgin Islands didn’t return electronic mail messages in search of remark.
Epstein was 66 when he took his life in August 2019 in a Manhattan federal jail the place he was awaiting trial on intercourse trafficking costs. He had pleaded not responsible to costs of sexually abusing dozens of women, some as younger as 14 years previous.
