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24-05-2023, 10:55 AM
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
2 hours ago
NEW YORK (AP) — JPMorgan Chase defended itself on Tuesday against a lawsuit by the U.S. Virgin Islands accusing it of empowering Jeffrey Epstein to abuse teenage girls by arguing in court papers that it was the islands, not the bank, that enabled the financier to commit his crimes.
Lawyers for the bank said in the Manhattan federal court filing that the government of the Virgin Islands was complicit, letting high ranking officials be bought off by Epstein and actively working with him while “reaping the benefits of his wealth.”
“He gave them money, advice, influence, and favors. In exchange, they shielded and even rewarded him,” providing lucrative tax breaks worth millions of dollars, they wrote.
Most troubling, they said, was that officials from the islands “protected Epstein, fostering the perfect conditions for Epstein’s criminal conduct to continue undetected.”
The lawyers 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, where Epstein had an estate, sued JPMorgan last year, saying its investigation revealed that the financial services giant 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 attorney general’s office said in an email 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.”
https://apnews.com/article/jpmorgan-epst...341bd2a7e5
2 hours ago
NEW YORK (AP) — JPMorgan Chase defended itself on Tuesday against a lawsuit by the U.S. Virgin Islands accusing it of empowering Jeffrey Epstein to abuse teenage girls by arguing in court papers that it was the islands, not the bank, that enabled the financier to commit his crimes.
Lawyers for the bank said in the Manhattan federal court filing that the government of the Virgin Islands was complicit, letting high ranking officials be bought off by Epstein and actively working with him while “reaping the benefits of his wealth.”
“He gave them money, advice, influence, and favors. In exchange, they shielded and even rewarded him,” providing lucrative tax breaks worth millions of dollars, they wrote.
Most troubling, they said, was that officials from the islands “protected Epstein, fostering the perfect conditions for Epstein’s criminal conduct to continue undetected.”
The lawyers 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, where Epstein had an estate, sued JPMorgan last year, saying its investigation revealed that the financial services giant 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 attorney general’s office said in an email 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.”
https://apnews.com/article/jpmorgan-epst...341bd2a7e5
