(UnitedVoice.com) – The US Virgin Islands (USVI) government filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase at the end of 2022. Officials allege the bank failed to report suspicious activity related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and financially benefited from his human trafficking operation. New information has now come to light about the bank’s dealings with the dead billionaire.
Representatives for JPMorgan and the USVI — the location of Epstein’s private islands — were in the US District Court in Manhattan on August 31. The government asked Judge Jed Rakoff to issue a summary judgment against the bank. Attorney Mimi Liu, representing the American territory, alleged JPMorgan flagged over $1 billion in transactions from Epstein’s bank account after he committed suicide in August 2019.
Liu told Rakoff that the transactions dated back 16 years. The bank reportedly filed paperwork notifying the Treasury Department that the money was possibly related to “human trafficking.” Epstein was a customer of JPMorgan from 1998 through 2013.
Liu claimed the convicted sex offender’s “entire business with JPMorgan and [the bank’s] entire business with Epstein was human trafficking.”
The attorney for the Virgin Islands accused the bank of only flagging the transactions because Epstein was arrested and then killed himself. She alleged there were multiple transfers totaling $9 million flowing in and out of the billionaire’s account. The money was reportedly used to facilitate over 20,000 sex acts. Additionally, Liu claimed there were multiple internal red flags related to Epstein’s account after his 2008 guilty plea in a Florida sex crime case, but said the bank ignored the warnings and continued doing business with him.
Felicia Ellsworth, an attorney for JPMorgan, denied the bank’s involvement in any of Epstein’s crimes. She said the USVI has no standing to sue because none of the victims lived in their territory. Further, she said there was no evidence the bank employees had any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
Meanwhile, Liu claimed, “JPMorgan was a full-service bank for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking.”
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