US Virgin Islands to seek $190mn from JPMorgan in Jeffrey Epstein trial

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The US Virgin Islands will seek a payout of at least $190mn from JPMorgan Chase in a looming trial over the bank’s alleged facilitation of Jeffrey Epstein’s human trafficking in the territory.

The demand, contained in a brief filed in court on Friday, comes just over a month after JPMorgan agreed to pay $290mn to settle a similar but separate claim brought by an unnamed Epstein victim on behalf of dozens of other women who allege they were abused at the hands of the late financier.

JPMorgan, which maintained Epstein as a client from 1998 until 2013, has not admitted any liability in either proceeding, but conceded its relationship with Epstein had been “a mistake”. The bank did not immediately respond to a request for further comment on the demands by the US Virgin Islands.

The pair of lawsuits from the unnamed victim and the US Virgin Islands, both filed late last year, have shone an unflattering light on the bank’s internal compliance processes and generated embarrassing headlines for the US’s largest lender.

Some of its most senior managers — including longstanding chief executive Jamie Dimon, and Mary Erdoes, the head of JPMorgan’s $4tn asset and wealth management business — were forced to answer questions under oath about what they knew of Epstein’s crimes.

Court filings revealed that employees at JPMorgan were aware by July 2006 that Epstein had been arrested in Florida, and that they had discussed his 2008 guilty plea to a state charge of soliciting a minor, as well as the requirement that he register as a sex offender. 

In a brief filed to a New York court on Friday, the US Virgin Islands said it was seeking $150mn in civil penalties, as well as $40mn in disgorgements of profits the territory claims that JPMorgan made from its relationship with Epstein, and the wealthy individuals he allegedly introduced to the bank.

As well as seeking a payout, the US Virgin Islands said in a statement that it wanted to force JPMorgan to implement “structural institutional changes” to prevent the bank from making similar errors in the future.

The proposed measures include separating JPMorgan’s business and compliance units and appointing an external consultant to ensure that the lender “does not prioritise profits over its duty to report suspicious activities”.

“JPMorgan Chase must make significant changes to detect, report and stop human trafficking,” the US Virgin Islands’ attorney-general Ariel Smith said.

“Financial penalties, as well as conduct changes, are important to make sure that JPMorgan Chase knows the cost of putting its own profits ahead of public safety,” she added.

The US Virgin Islands is also demanding that JPMorgan pays its legal fees if its lawsuit is successful and that the bank set up a fund to compensate victims who were allegedly abused in the territory.

A trial is set for October.

Epstein died by suicide in 2019 in New York, while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking. His associate Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022.

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