Wall Street Tuned Blind Eye To Epstein’s Massive Money Laundering Scheme, Senator Alleges
Wall Street executives abetted notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein by executing wire transfers to his victims and powerful friends while shielding him from law enforcement, according to a new Senate investigation.
Wall Street executives abetted notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein by executing wire transfers to his victims and powerful friends while shielding him from law enforcement, according to a new Senate investigation.
Epstein’s “suspicious” bank transfers totaled $1 billion, the report alleges. JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America likely violated federal anti-money laundering laws for their wealthy client, the report states. Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden released the report detailing his staff’s four-year investigation on Tuesday afternoon. Investigators reviewed bank records, including suspicious activity reports housed at the U.S. Treasury.
The ultra wealthy may enjoy an exemption to the federal anti-money laundering laws that are supposed to stop human trafficking, fentanyl trafficking and terrorism, the report suggests.
JPMorgan and Bank of America vigorously disputed the report’s conclusions in statements to the Daily Caller News Foundation. Deutsche Bank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The report alleges that the trio of banks declined to report Epstein to the authorities for years, amounting to a coverup rather than a mere failure of oversight. The banks only retroactively flagged the suspicious activity after Epstein’s rearrest in 2019. Only then did JPMorgan flag 4,725 wire transfers totaling $1.1 billion.
JPMorgan challenged the report’s allegations, saying that it began flagging suspicious transactions years before Epstein’s 2019 arrest.
“We disagree with the report’s conclusions. We began flagging suspicious transactions for the government as early as 2002, and continued filing reports in 2003, 2008, and 2013. After ending our relationship in 2013, we continued to identify transactions for law enforcement that could be related to human trafficking,” said Trish Wexler, a spokesperson for JPMorgan. “Every one of these reports went to the government – and at no point did any law enforcement agency contact the bank, request further records or provide information that would have supported additional action by the bank.”