US Virgin Islands will seek $190 million from JP Morgan in Jeffrey Epstein trial

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The US Virgin Islands will seek at least $190 million in payments from JPMorgan Chase in an ongoing lawsuit over the bank’s alleged facilitation of Jeffrey Epstein’s human trafficking in the territory.

The demand, included in a court brief filed Friday, comes after JPMorgan agreed to pay $290 million to settle a similar but separate claim brought by an unnamed Epstein victim on behalf of dozens of other women. This comes exactly a month after she alleged that she was abused. In the hands of the late financier.

JP Morgan, which retained Epstein as a client from 1998 to 2013, has admitted no liability in any of the proceedings, but has acknowledged that its relationship with Epstein was “a mistake”. The bank did not immediately respond to a request for further comment on the US Virgin Islands’ demands.

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

Some of its most senior managers – including longtime chief executive Jamie Dimon and Mary Erdős, the head of JP Morgan’s $4tn asset and wealth management business – were forced to answer questions under oath that they were not aware of Epstein’s involvement. What do you know about crimes?

Court filings revealed that JPMorgan employees knew by July 2006 that Epstein had been arrested in Florida, and that they had discussed his 2008 guilty plea to the state charge of assaulting a minor, with It also discussed the need to register him as a sex offender. ,

In a brief filed in a New York court on Friday, the US Virgin Islands said it is seeking a $150 million civil penalty, as well as the territory’s claim that JPMorgan has shied away from its ties to Epstein and the wealthy. Earned a profit of 40 million dollars. The persons whom he had allegedly introduced to the bank.

As well as demanding payment, 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.

Proposed measures include separating JPMorgan’s business and compliance units and appointing an outside consultant to ensure the lender “does not prioritize profits over its duty to report suspicious activities”.

“JPMorgan Chase must make significant changes to detect, report and prevent human trafficking,” said Ariel Smith, Attorney-General of the US Virgin Islands.

“The financial penalties, as well as a change in conduct, are critical to ensuring that JPMorgan Chase knows the value of putting its profits before public safety,” he added.

The US Virgin Islands is also demanding that JPMorgan pay its legal fees if its suit 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 New York in 2019, 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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