The US Virgin Islands government has accused JPMorgan Chase of aiding late financier and convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s operations.
The lawsuit has alleged that Epstein’s account with the bank was primarily used for human trafficking. It further states that despite there being many red flags over the years, the bank always “turned a blind eye” “because of the deals and clients that Epstein brought and promised to bring to the bank.”
The lawsuit was filed in New York’s Southern District by USVI Attorney General Denise George. It also states that the bank continued extending to Epstein the services it usually reserves for its most high-profile clients even after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to child prostitution charges.
Business Insider reports that according to the new lawsuit, the bank “knowingly facilitated, sustained, and concealed the human trafficking network operated by Jeffrey Epstein”.
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The lawsuit further accuses that the bank “facilitated and concealed wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of — and were in fact part of — a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude of dozens of women and girls in and beyond the Virgin Islands”.
The lawsuit has named Southern Trust, one of the accounts Morgan had at JP Morgan Chase, as “a conduit for payment to foreign women, credit cards, airplanes, and other instrumentalities.”
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The AGVI’s office had earlier released a statement that it had settled a lawsuit with Epstein’s estate for $105 million in connection with “more than $80 million in economic development tax benefits that Epstein and his co-defendants fraudulently obtained to fuel his criminal enterprise”.
JPMorgan Chase, along with Deutsche Bank, have asked a federal court to dismiss lawsuits brought against them by two women who have alleged that they had both gained from Epstein’s sex trafficking operations.
