Jeffrey Epstein in Cambridge, MA in 1984.
Rick Friedman|Corbis News|Getty Images
JPMorgan Chase informed the Treasury Department of more than $1 billion in deals associated with “human trafficking” by Jeffrey Epstein going back 16 years after the well-known sex predator eliminated himself in 2019, an attorney for the U.S. Virgin Islands informed a federal judge at a hearing.
“Epstein’s entire business with JPMorgan and JPMorgan’s entire business with Epstein was human trafficking,” Mimi Liu, a lawyer for the Virgin Islands, informed Judge Jed Rakoff in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Thursday, according to a records evaluated by CNBC.
Liu pointed out the bank’s notice to the Treasury Department as she argued that Rakoff ought to release a summary judgment versus JPMorgan.
The substantial bank is being taken legal action against by the Virgin Islands federal government for presumably assisting in sex trafficking by Epstein of girls when he was a JPMorgan consumer from 1998 through 2013.
The lawyer, describing a $9 million block of transfers to females and suspicious withdrawals from Epstein’s accounts at JPMorgan, stated it associated to “facilitating” more than 20,000 sexual acts, offered Epstein’s practice of paying a number of hundred dollars for each sexual encounter.
“JPMorgan was a full-service bank for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking,” Liu stated at the hearing.
“The only reason that JPMorgan after 16 years reported the $1 billion in suspicious transactions was because he was arrested and then he was dead,” she stated”This was a CYA [cover your a–] reporting after 16 years of all of the cashes streaming in his JPMorgan accounts after he was dead.
The Virgin Islands has actually implicated the bank of continuing to work with Epstein for several years regardless of duplicated warnings internally and his 2008 guilty plea to a Florida sex criminal offense.
“By 2006, the bank therefore had reams of monetary info associated to Jeffrey Epstein that substantiated his sex criminal offenses including kids,” Liu argued.
Epstein, 66, eliminated himself in a New York prison in August 2019, a month after he was apprehended on federal kid sex trafficking charges.
In addition to a home in Manhattan, Epstein owned a personal island in the Virgin Islands, where he was implicated of sexually abusing females.
An attorney for JPMorgan, which rejects misbehavior in the event, pressed back versus the Virgin Islands declares that it ought to be discovered responsible for abetting Epstein’s abuse of females.
The Virgin Islands is looking for a minimum of $190 million in damages in the event, which will go to trial onOct 23 if Rakoff does not approve summary judgment to either side.
The bank’s attorney, Felicia Ellsworth, informed Rakoff that the Virgin Islands had actually provided “not a scintilla” of proof that JPMorgan broke laws about sex trafficking.
Ellsworth likewise argued that the Virgin Islands did not have the legal standing to take legal action against the bank.
JPMorgan has stated the American area can just take legal action against to vindicate the rights of citizens, which there is no evidence that any of Epstein’s victims were citizens of the Virgin Islands.
“There is fiercely challenged testament and proof,” Ellsworth informedRakoff
“There is, as I stated, testament from JPMorgan present and previous workers disclaiming understanding” of Epstein’s criminal conduct,” she stated.
A JPMorgan spokesperson decreased to comment to CNBC about the Virgin Islands’ declares that the bank informed the Treasury Department of more than a $1 billion in suspicious deals by Epstein.
JPMorgan in July accepted pay $290 million in a settlement with victims of Epstein to solve a comparable suit submitted by among the accusers in Manhattan federal court.
In June, Deutsche Bank, which had actually taken Epstein on as a customer after he was displaced by JPMorgan in 2013, accepted pay $75 million to Epstein’s victims to settle a 3rd fit in the very same court.
