A file picture from 2013 offered by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement exhibits financier Jeffrey Epstein.

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AP

A file picture from 2013 offered by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement exhibits financier Jeffrey Epstein.

AP

The authorities of the U.S. Virgin Islands alleges in a lawsuit filed this week that JPMorgan Chase “turned a blind eye” to proof that disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein used the financial institution to facilitate sex-trafficking actions on Little St. James, the personal island he owned within the territory till his 2019 suicide.

In a greater than 100-page criticism filed by U.S.V.I. Attorney General Denise George within the Southern District of New York in Manhattan on Tuesday, the territory alleges that JPMorgan didn’t report Epstein’s suspicious actions and offered the financier with providers reserved for high-wealth purchasers after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution in Palm Beach, Fla.

The criticism says the territory’s Department of Justice investigation “revealed that JP Morgan knowingly, negligently, and unlawfully provided and pulled the levers through which recruiters and victims were paid and was indispensable to the operation and concealment of the Epstein trafficking enterprise.”

It accused the financial institution of ignoring proof for “more than a decade because of Epstein’s own financial footprint, and because of the deals and clients that Epstein brought and promised to bring to the bank.”

“These decisions were advocated and approved at the senior levels of JP Morgan,” it stated.

The financial institution allegedly “facilitated and concealed wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of — and were in fact part of — a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude of dozens of women and girls in and beyond the Virgin Islands,” in line with the criticism, which included a number of pages that had been redacted in complete or partially.

It stated that human trafficking “was the principal business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JP Morgan.”

When NPR reached JPMorgan Chase, the financial institution declined to remark.

Tuesday’s authorized motion comes simply weeks after the united statesV.I. introduced a $105 million settlement with Epstein’s property, meant partially to claw again “more than $80 million in economic development tax benefits that Epstein and his co-defendants fraudulently obtained to fuel his criminal enterprise,” the legal professional normal’s workplace stated in a Dec. 1 assertion.

Additionally, the settlement requires the territory to obtain half of the proceeds from the sale of Little St. James island “on which Epstein resided and on which many of his crimes occurred.”

After a household had reported that Epstein had sexually abused her 14-year-old daughter in 2005, police in Palm Beach opened an investigation that led to a responsible plea three years later. Under the phrases of the cope with the state of Florida, Epstein served 13 months in a work-release program, was pressured to pay restitution to the victims and register as a intercourse offender.

Epstein was once more arrested on comparable costs in New York in 2019, however killed himself in federal jail whereas awaiting trial.

Deutsche Bank was investigated in 202o by New York state authorities for failing to report suspicious exercise in Epstein’s account regardless of figuring out of his legal historical past. The financial institution later agreed to pay a $150 million penalty.