Attorneys for the U.S. Virgin Islands told a New York federal judge on Thursday that JPMorgan was a full-service bank for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking in a request for summary judgement in a lawsuit seeking $190 million in damages from the banking giant for failing to stop underage sex trafficking for more than ten years.
In a civil complaint, the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein had a private island home off St. Thomas for many years, claims that JPMorgan Chase was aware of and carelessly ignored the fact that the paedophile financier ran a sex trafficking operation that, according to attorneys, brought $1 billion into the bank between 2003 and Epstein’s passing in 2019 brought in.
On Thursday afternoon, Motley Rice attorney Mimi Liu told U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff that “JPMorgan’s entire business with Jeffrey Epstein was sex trafficking.”
In accordance with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), the civil suit was filed in the Southern District of New York last year.
Epstein was a client of JPMorgan from 1998 until 2013, when the bank closed his accounts, but according to the U.S. Virgin Islands, the bank continued to profit from Epstein’s recommendations up until his death in a jail cell in August 2019.
The U.S. Virgin Islands claims in its motion for summary judgement that by the time Epstein was arrested for prostitution in 2006 in Palm Beach, Florida, the company’s compliance staff was aware of alleged human trafficking and acknowledged Epstein was “known to pay cash for his massages” and “minors are the issue.”
The U.S. Virgin Islands claimed in its updated complaint that between 2000 and 2013, when JPMorgan Chase did business with Epstein, multiple senior bank executives willfully disregarded federal banking rules designed to prevent human trafficking. It is made apparent in the complaint that banks have access to special, real-time data that enables them to determine whether clients may be engaging in questionable or illegal activities.
The bank received $4 million in payments to girls and women with Eastern European surnames or who were based in Eastern Europe between 2003 and 2013, during which time JPMorgan was aware that Epstein was allegedly involved in the trafficking of young girls, according to Liu.
For Epstein, who was known to give ladies $200 to $300 in cash for massages, the bank allegedly enabled $5 million in structured cash withdrawals, totaling, according to Liu, “more than 20,000 unlawful sex acts facilitated by JPMorgan.”
For his 16-year association with the bank, the territory wants JPMorgan to pay $190 million in civil damages, which consists of a $150 million civil penalties and a $40 million forfeiture.
According to additional allegations made by the U.S. Virgin Islands, JPMorgan also processed millions of dollars in payments from Epstein to individuals who were known to be complicit, recruiters, victims, girls, and women up to 2019. This included payments made to women in years that corresponded with their visits to the territory.
JPMorgan and Epstein’s victims reached a confidential deal earlier this year, and in June, JPMorgan agreed to pay $290 million to end a federal class action launched by a number of trafficked and abused women.
The $75 million settlement negotiated a month earlier with Germany’s Deutsche Bank, which transacted business with Epstein from 2013 to 2018, was nearly six times higher than the settlement JPMorgan reached with victims, which is still awaiting Rakoff’s approval.
Attorneys for JPMorgan argued on Thursday that the company’s deal with the victims should preclude individual victim claims for compensatory damages in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
“First, USVI can only sue to vindicate the interests of’residents,’ and here it has no proof that any victim was a resident of the USVI (rather than a person trafficked to or from the Islands),” JPMorgan claimed in its move for summary judgement. Second, USVI’s request for damages “on behalf of victims” disregards the fact that those same victims have previously received compensation in two similar cases.
Rakoff promised a decision on the cross-motions for summary judgement by the end of September at the latest, but the session ended without one.
The trial date of October 3, 2023, according to Rakoff, is a “firm, fixed, final, and unmovable date.”
The Clinton-appointed judge said, “I only see this as a bench trial in my nightmares.
In March, JPMorgan Chase filed a lawsuit against Jes Staley, its former executive, claiming that he helped cover up Epstein’s long history of sex abuse and human trafficking in order to retain the billionaire as a customer.
In two connected cases, the New York bank is attempting to hold Staley personally accountable for any financial penalties that JPMorgan may be required to pay. It also wants to have Staley pay back salary for the time that he allegedly knew about the abuse and “personally observed” Epstein’s behaviour on numerous occasions.
On September 26, Rakoff will hear arguments on these third-party issues.
In 2013, Staley resigned from JPMorgan to take the helm of London-based bank Barclays. He quit last year as a result of a British authorities’ investigation into his prior connections to Epstein.
Approximately one year after the program’s debut on June 25, 2020, or two years after Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail cell, the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Programme revealed it had given nearly $125 million to about 150 qualifying applicants.