The federal government of the U.S. Virgin Islands in a court filing Friday estimated that it is going to seek damages of at the least $190 million from JPMorgan Chase in a lawsuit accusing the large bank of facilitating sex trafficking by its former long-time customer Jeffrey Epstein.
The Virgin Islands also said it wants an order requiring JPMorgan to take a series of steps to guard young women and girls from other predators in the longer term.
“These sets of recommendations aim to handle the identical core problem: JPMorgan’s knowledge of
and failure to report Epstein’s trafficking since it lacked the economic incentive and motivation
to put compliance with the law and prevention of trafficking ahead of its own profits,” the filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan says.
The American territory also said it is going to seek further compensatory damages specifically for victims of Epstein beyond the nearly $300 million JPMorgan agreed to pay victims last month to settle a lawsuit by one among his accusers. The filing didn’t give an amount for those additional damages.
The brand new filing got here in response to a request last week by Judge Jed Rakoff that the territory detail the damages it seeks within the case because it heads toward a scheduled Oct. 23 trial.
The Virgin Islands’ suit accuses JPMorgan of benefiting from Epstein’s trafficking of young women to be abused by him and others through the 15 years he was a client of the bank, which is the most important in america.
The criticism alleges JPMorgan allowed Epstein to maintain many tens of millions of dollars in accounts on the bank, which he used to fund his trafficking of girls, despite multiple red flags about him raised by bank employees over time.
JPMorgan, which had no immediate comment Friday, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing within the case.
“We’re pursuing this enforcement motion because JPMorgan Chase’s institutional failure enabled Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking, and JPMorgan Chase must make significant changes to detect, report and stop human trafficking,” said U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Ariel Smith in an announcement Friday.
“Financial penalties, in addition to conduct changes, are necessary to make sure that that JPMorgan Chase knows the fee of putting its own profits ahead of public safety,” said Smith.
She said that if the Virgin Islands wins its suit, it is going to uses the monetary damages it receives “to support efforts to strengthen, inform, and expand local law enforcement and enhance the Virgin Islands’ services for victims of human trafficking and other victims of crime.”
The filing says the Virgin Islands wants at the least $150 million in civil penalties alone. The filing also says that it wants JPMorgan to disgorge at the least one other $40 million in fees that Epstein generated for the bank, and that JPMorgan received from “many ultra-high net value clients” he referred to the bank.
Those clients, the filing said, included Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Lex Wexner, the founding father of Limited Brands, and the billionaire Glenn Dubin.
Along with the monetary damages, the Virgin Islands is also asking JPMorgan be compelled “to implement latest policies, including separating its business and compliance functions and designating an independent compliance consultant, to forestall human trafficking,” in keeping with a press release by Smit’s office.
JPMorgan in its own court filings has accused the Virgin Islands itself of being “complicit within the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.”
The bank alleges Epstein gave high-ranking officials there money, advice and favors in exchange for looking the opposite way when he trafficked young women to be abused there.
Epstein had a residence on a non-public island within the territory, where accusers say he and other people sexually abused them.
Last month in the identical court where the Virgin Islands is suing the bank JPMorgan agreed, without admitting wrongdoing, to pay $290 million to victims of Epstein to settle a suit by one among his accusers.
In May, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay Epstein victims $75 million to settle a separate lawsuit by an accuser who accused that back of abetting his sex trafficking of her and others. Deutsche Bank took on Epstein as a customer after JPMorgan severed ties with him in 2013, years after bank employees first voiced concerns about him.
Deutsche Bank previously agreed to pay Recent York state’s Department of Financial Services a $150 million penalty for failure to detect or prevent tens of millions of dollars of suspicious transactions related to Epstein, which included “payments to Russian models and to quite a few women with Eastern European surnames,” the filing Friday by the Virgin Islands noted.
Epstein, who had been a friend to former Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, in addition to Prince Andrew of Great Britain, pleaded guilty in 2008 to a Florida state charge of soliciting sex from an underage girl. He served 13 months in jail, but spent much of that point on work release every day.
Epstein, then 66, killed himself in a federal jail in Recent York in August 2019, a month after he was arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.
