JPMorgan Chase & Co on Tuesday sought to deflect blame for failing to stamp out sex crimes committed by the late Jeffrey Epstein, accusing the U.S. Virgin Islands of harboring and protecting the disgraced financier as he abused young women and girls for two decades .
The largest U.S. bank made the allegation in a heavily redacted filing in Manhattan federal court, where the U.S. Virgin Islands is suing to find it liable for providing banking services to Epstein from 1998 to 2013.
JPMorgan said Epstein had a “quid pro quo” relationship with top officials in the US Virgin Islands, donating money and favors in exchange for millions of dollars in tax breaks and looking the other way on his crimes.
Epstein, a registered sex offender, allegedly molested women and girls on a private island he owned within the area and purchased a second island nearby to prevent people from spying on him.
JPMorgan said he also “influenced” local sex offender laws and that inspections of his home were “fleeting” at best.
“For twenty years, and long after JPMC left Epstein as a client, the entity that most directly failed to protect public safety and most actively facilitated and profited from Epstein’s continued criminal activity was the plaintiff in this case – the USVI government itself,” the bank said.
A spokesman for the area’s attorney general called the filing “an obvious attempt to shift blame from JPMorgan Chase, which had a legal responsibility to report the evidence in its possession of Epstein’s trafficking, and did not did”.
Tuesday’s filing opposed the U.S. Virgin Islands’ attempt to bring four JPMorgan defenses to the lawsuit that allegedly “threatened[ed] to expose her relationship with Epstein, including that the area had “unclean hands.”
Epstein, 66, died in August 2019 in a New York jail while awaiting trial for sex trafficking. The New York City coroner ruled his death a suicide.
‘Narrow tyres’
JPMorgan said Epstein had “close ties” to the area’s last three governors, including incumbent Albert Bryan.
It also said Epstein’s “primary conduit” for spreading money and influence was former First Lady Cecile de Jongh, whose husband was governor from 2007 to 2015. She did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
According to the filing, Epstein also endorsed Congressman Stacey Plaskett, the territory’s delegate to the U.S. Congress who once worked for an agency that grants his tax benefits.
“Jeffrey Epstein’s behavior was despicable,” Plaskett said in a statement. “As I have said in the past, contributions from Jeffrey Epstein to my campaign were donated to nonprofits targeting women and children in the Virgin Islands.”
Bryan will testify under oath on June 6. The Attorney General’s Office had no comment on his behalf.
JPMorgan is also facing a proposed class action by women who say Epstein sexually assaulted them and that the bank should have cut ties with Epstein sooner.
The bank is separately suing Jes Staley, who once ran his wealth management business and was friends with Epstein, to have him cover losses in the other two lawsuits.
Staley has expressed regret for befriending Epstein but denied knowing about his crimes, accusing JPMorgan of making him a scapegoat for his own oversight failures.
The three lawsuits are scheduled for trial on October 23.
Deutsche Bank AG, where Epstein was a client from 2013 to 2018, settled a $75 million lawsuit from its plaintiffs last week.
The case is Government of the US Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, US District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-10904.