…accusing the bank of helping Jeffrey Epstein sex-traffic minors at his villa by ‘knowingly providing and pulling the levers through which recruiters and victims were paid’
- A new lawsuit accuses Chase bank of ‘turning a blind eye’ to Epstein’s crimes
- The complaint was filed Wednesday in Manhattan District Court by the US Virgin Islands Attorney General’s office
- The suit accuses Epstein of using his home on the islands for his horrific crimes
- Epstein, who died in 2019, was a client of JP Morgan Chase for 15 years
- The suit alleges that Chase ignored the various red flags surrounding Epstein
A new lawsuit launched by the US Virgin Islands’ attorney general on Wednesday accuses JPMorgan Chase of ‘turning a blind eye’ to the horrific sex crimes committed by Jeffrey Epstein.
In the suit, USVI AG Denise George accuses Chase of ‘knowingly providing and pulling the levers through which recruiters and victims were paid.’ The complaint was filed in Manhattan District Court.
George goes on to allege that Chase ignored the truth surrounding Epstein, such as his 2008 conviction in Florida for procuring a child for prostitution, in order to keep him as a client, reports The New York Times.
The bank, who have yet to comment on the suit, kept Epstein as a client between 1998 and 2013 before finally cutting ties.
For years, the secretive financier was based out of his his private island, Little St. James in the Virgin Islands. He was found dead in 2019 in his jail cell in Manhattan while awaiting trial on sexual abuse of minors and trafficking charges. The official cause of death was suicide.
The new lawsuit explicitly states that Epstein used his home on Little St. James for his sex crimes. In June, Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years prison for trafficking minors for sex.
Epstein first became a client at Chase in 1998. There have been numerous reports since his death that the bank’s executives sought to keep Epstein on board due to his connections with some of the richest people in the world.
One section of the lawsuit reads: ‘Human trafficking was the principal business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JPMorgan.’
AG George said that the suit was part of an ‘outgoing effort’ to bring accountability to those who helped to facilitate Epstein’s actions.
The complaint goes on to accuse Chase of concealing ‘wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude’ of young girls.
The damages being sought by the US Virgin Islands are unspecified in the lawsuit.
The filing of the suit comes a day after President Joe Biden traveled to the Virgin Islands to enjoy some downtime and warmer weather and to ring in a new year with family.
The president and his wife, first lady Jill Biden, flew from Washington on Tuesday to St. Croix, one of three islands that make up the U.S. territory in the Caribbean.
The Bidens were joined by their daughter Ashley and her husband, Howard Krein, as well as grandchildren Natalie and Hunter, whose father was the president’s late son, Beau.