JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon speaks to reporters as he leaves the US Capitol after an unannounced meeting with US Senate Majority Leader Schumer, reportedly outside the US Capitol in Washington, May 17. 2023 was about the possibility of defaulting on its loan.
Evelyn Hochstein | reuters
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon testified in a statement in New York on Friday that he had no involvement with the accounts of Jeffrey Epstein, a longtime customer of the bank.
Dimon was being ousted for lawsuits accusing JP Morgan of facilitating and profiting from Epstein’s sex trafficking of young women, which he financed with money stored there.
One bank said, “Our CEO reaffirms after his statement, as he has said before, that he never met her, never emailed her, never discussed her accounts internally, and Wasn’t involved in any decisions regarding his account.” Spokesman. “Millions and millions of emails and other documents have been produced in this case and no one comes close to suggesting that they had any role in Epstein’s accounts decisions.”
The spokeswoman said: “As we’ve said, we now know that Epstein’s behavior was monstrous, and his victims deserve justice. Any association with him was a mistake and we’re sorry, but these prosecutions are wrong.” direction because we didn’t help.” He commits his heinous crimes.”
Dimon made his statement at JPMorgan’s headquarters in Manhattan. The bank had previously lost an attempt to dismiss a lawsuit by the plaintiffs – the government of the US Virgin Islands – and an unnamed Epstein accuser.
The suit claims that JPMorgan, the largest bank in the United States, kept Epstein on as a client despite knowing that he was being investigated in Florida for sexually abusing underage girls and that in 2008 He paid for sex after pleading guilty to state charges. Minor.
The bank is accused in complaints in US District Court in Manhattan of doing this to keep Epstein, who kept hundreds of millions of dollars in accounts there despite internal concerns about his scandalous reputation.
The Virgin Islands say Epstein used frequent cash withdrawals from those accounts to pay for young women to travel to the US territory so that he and others could abuse them at his residence on his private island.
“Human trafficking was [principal] trading accounts created by Epstein at JPMorgan,” the Virgin Islands lawsuit says.
Dimon’s statement was taken in private. The questions asked of him and the answers he gives would only be public if they are used in court filings and proceedings, or if they are leaked.
Also Friday afternoon, Judge Jed Rakoff heard a request by the defendant’s attorneys to certify his lawsuit as a class action complaint that could add dozens of potential defendants as plaintiffs. JP Morgan opposes that request. Rakoff is expected to rule on that issue by the end of June.
In addition to questioning Dimon under oath, the Virgin Islands has issued subpoenas to several high-profile people seeking documents related to Epstein and JP Morgan, which the government suspects Epstein obtained as fellow clients of the bank. Tried to recruit.
they include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, former Disney executive Michael Ovitz, Hyatt Hotels executive chairman Thomas Pritzker and billionaire real estate investor Mort Zuckerman.
Dimon’s statement comes more than a week after Deutsche Bank Epstein agreed to pay $75 million to victims to settle a class action lawsuit by one of his accusers. Epstein was taken on as a client after Deutsche Bank severed ties with JPMorgan in 2013 after having him as a client for 15 years.
JP Morgan has said that Dimon did not review Epstein’s accounts when he was a client from 1998 until 2013, the year in which JP Morgan severed its relationship with him.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York prison six years later, a month after federal authorities accused him of trafficking girls for sex.
JP Morgan pushes back
JP Morgan said in a related complaint that any civil liability it may have from Epstein’s conduct is the responsibility of its former executive Jess Staley, who was a friend of Epstein’s and his main business contact at the bank.
Staley, who denies any wrongdoing, earlier this week lost a bid to dismiss JP Morgan’s complaint against him, which among other things sought to recover $80 million in damages. .
In addition to trying to blame Staley, JPMorgan accused the Virgin Islands of being “complicit in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes” in a court filing this week.
The filing said Epstein viewed the Virgin Islands differently as a trafficker of young women because he was providing money, advice and favors to high-ranking officials there.
The filing specifically states that Epstein paid tuition for the children of John de Jong and his wife, Cecile, when John served as governor of the Virgin Islands and when Cecile sold her companies in the territory to Epstein. Worked to manage
Cecil also allegedly made efforts to secure student visas for young women linked to Epstein, and was “the primary conduit for channeling money and influence into the USVI government.”
The Washington Post on Friday published details of a previously taken statement from Marie Erdős, who runs JPMorgan’s Asset and Wealth Management division.
“Oh boy,” Erdős wrote in an email to another bank executive in 2011, when he learned of Epstein’s status as a sex offender, which was confirmed, The Washington Post reported.
The newspaper said that “for at least the sixth time Erdöys … had been alerted to criminal or civil legal trouble for Epstein’s sex crimes.”
