JPMorgan Chase defends lawsuit by blaming US Virgin Islands for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes
NEW YORK –
JPMorgan Chase defended itself on Tuesday towards a lawsuit by the U.S. Virgin Islands accusing it of empowering Jeffrey Epstein to abuse teenage ladies by arguing in court docket papers that it was the islands, not the financial institution, that enabled the financier to commit his crimes.
Lawyers for the financial institution stated within the Manhattan federal court docket submitting that the federal government of the Virgin Islands was complicit, letting excessive rating officers be purchased off by Epstein and actively working with him whereas “reaping the benefits of his wealth.”
“He gave them money, advice, influence, and favors. In exchange, they shielded and even rewarded him,” offering profitable tax breaks value hundreds of thousands of {dollars}, they wrote.
Most troubling, they stated, was that officers from the islands “protected Epstein, fostering the perfect conditions for Epstein’s criminal conduct to continue undetected.”
The attorneys added: “For two decades, and for long after JPMC exited Epstein as a client, the entity that most directly failed to protect public safety and most actively facilitated and benefited from Epstein’s continued criminal activity was the plaintiff in this case — the USVI government itself.”
The Virgin Islands, the place Epstein had an property, sued JPMorgan final 12 months, saying its investigation revealed that the monetary companies big enabled Epstein’s recruiters to pay victims and was “indispensable to the operation and concealment of the Epstein trafficking enterprise.”
“JPMorgan Chase facilitated Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, and should be held accountable for violating the law,” a spokesperson from the U.S. Virgin Islands lawyer basic’s workplace stated in an electronic mail Tuesday. “This is an obvious attempt to shift blame away from JPMorgan Chase, which had a legal responsibility to report the evidence in its possession of Epstein’s human trafficking, and failed to do so.”
In their submitting Tuesday, the financial institution’s attorneys stated Virgin Islands officers appeared the opposite approach when Epstein went via its airports with ladies and younger girls as he donated generously to political campaigns. The attorneys stated officers had been lenient with necessities that he register as a intercourse offender, doing inspections of his residence that had been “cursory at best.”
“In sum, in exchange for Epstein’s cash and gifts, USVI made life easy for him,” the attorneys stated. “The government mitigated any burdens from his sex offender status. And it made sure that no one asked too many questions about his transport and keeping of young girls on his island.”
Portions of the submitting had been closely redacted. It requested Judge Jed Rakoff to reject the islands’ makes an attempt to stop the financial institution from utilizing defenses at trial that will expose the islands’ position in Epstein’s dealings.
The attorneys wrote that “alleged damages must be balanced against the considerable benefits that USVI reaped from its facilitation of Epstein’s crimes.”
Epstein was 66 when he took his life in August 2019 in a Manhattan federal jail the place he was awaiting trial on intercourse trafficking prices. He had pleaded not responsible to prices of sexually abusing dozens of women, some as younger as 14 years previous.
