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.
Epsteinâs âsuspiciousâ 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 staffâs 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 reportâs 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 Epsteinâs rearrest in 2019. Only then did JPMorgan flag 4,725 wire transfers totaling $1.1 billion.
JPMorgan challenged the reportâs allegations, saying that it began flagging suspicious transactions years before Epsteinâs 2019 arrest.
âWe disagree with the reportâs 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,â said Trish Wexler, a spokesperson for JPMorgan. âEvery one of these reports went to the government â 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.â
âIt is disappointing that, instead of advancing new facts that would help bring accountability to the men who participated in Epsteinâs trafficking operation, the report largely recycles allegations that have already been exhaustively examined by courts and the government,â Wexler told the DCNF.
âRegarding claims that Epstein âremained a client in all but nameâ after we severed ties, this is patently false,â she said.
âWe take our legal and regulatory obligations seriously and, as we have previously said, the bank did not facilitate wrongdoing,â said Bank of America spokesperson Abbey Collins.
News of these wire transfers first broke last fall, before Senate investigators had completed their report.
Some of the bankers who handled Epsteinâs accounts remained in the financial services sector, the report states. The investigation even names some of those individuals.
Wyden said the report is âa ready-made roadmap for prosecutors, investigators and members of Congress to finally start holding the Epstein class accountable.â
Private equity billionaire Leon Black made $170 million in payments to Epstein without an eyebrow being raised at the highest echelon of those financial institutions, the report states.
When rank-and-file legal compliance experts at JPMorgan flagged certain transactions, senior executives failed to act, instead opting to protect their well-connected client from deeper scrutiny, Senate investigators found. Black was Epsteinâs largest source of funding, the report states.
A request for comment sent through Blackâs former firm, Apollo Global Management, did not receive an immediate reply.
Although JPMorgan formally severed ties over Epsteinâs human trafficking allegations in 2013, the bank continued to maintain contact and leverage his relationships with other wealthy individuals like Black, the report states. The report alleges that the bank coached Epstein on how to withdraw cash from shell companies. The report even alleges executives knew about the prevalence of young girls in Epsteinâs orbit.
All three banks did not ask for proper documentation for massive withdrawals of cash, Wydenâs report alleges. The suspicious transactions included transfers to and from Russia.
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