Deutsche Bank can pay $75 million to victims

Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $75 million to victims of sex predator Jeffrey Epstein to settle a federal lawsuit accusing the bank of enabling and benefitting from its customer’s sex trafficking of young women, sources told CNBC on Wednesday night.

The bombshell deal still leaves JPMorgan Chase to defend its own would-be class motion lawsuit by Epstein accusers in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, which involves similar allegations.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who has said the bank is just not accountable for sex trafficking by its former long-time customer Epstein, is resulting from be deposed in that suit, and a related one by the federal government of the U.S. Virgin Islands on May 26.

The settlement agreement by Deutsche Bank, which is able to put aside $75 million for Epstein accusers, was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Under the deal, victims of Epstein who were affected by his sex trafficking in the course of the time when he was a customer of Deutsche Bank, from 2013 through 2018, would receive no less than $75,000 and as much as $5 million depending on an evaluation of their claims.

Deutsche Bank spokesman Dylan Riddle wouldn’t comment on the deal, but noted that his bank has spent greater than 4 billion euros [$4.34 billion] to strengthen internal financial controls.

“In recent times Deutsche Bank has made considerable progress in remedying numerous past issues,” Riddle said. 

He noted that in 2020, when the bank agreed to pay a $150 million high quality to Recent York’s financial regulator for its dealings with Epstein and other issues, Deutsche Bank had said, “We acknowledge our error onboarding Epstein in 2013, and the weaknesses in our processes, and have learnt from our mistakes and our shortcomings.”

The 2 law firms representing the accusers, Edwards Pottinger and Boies Schiller Flexner, in a joint statement obtained by CNBC said: “This groundbreaking settlement is the culmination of two law firms conducting greater than a decade-long investigation to carry considered one of Epstein’s financial banking partners answerable for the role it played in facilitating his trafficking organization.”

The suit, which was searching for class-action status, was filed in November by a lady using the pseudonym Jane Doe. She alleged Deutsche Bank knowingly participated in and financially benefited from participating in Epstein’s sex trafficking “by providing the requisite financial support for the continued operation” of that scheme.

“Deutsche Bank also knew that Epstein would use technique of force, threats of force, fraud, abuse of legal process, exploitation of power disparity, and quite a lot of other types of coercion to cause young women and girls to have interaction in industrial sex acts,” the suit says.

“Knowing that they might earn thousands and thousands of dollars from facilitating Epstein’s sex trafficking, and from its relationship with Epstein, Deutsche Bank selected profit over following the law,” the suit said. “Specifically, Deutsche Bank selected facilitating a sex trafficking operation in an effort to churn profits.”

Epstein, who had been a customer of JPMorgan from 1998 through 2013, became a customer of Deutsche Bank after JPMorgan ended its banking relationship with him.

“Deutsche Bank picked up exactly where JPMorgan left off and have become the bank that Epstein needed to fund his sexual abuse and sex-trafficking operation,” the suit says.

Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan federal jail in August 2019, a month after being arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.

His arrest in that case got here 10 years after he served a jail sentence or greater than a 12 months for pleading guilty in Florida state court to soliciting sex for money from an underage girl. That 2008 guilty plea was widely publicized.