Lawyers for the bank said in the Manhattan federal court filing that the government of the Virgin Islands was complicit, letting high ranking officials be bought off by Epstein and actively working with him while “reaping the benefits of his wealth.”
“He gave them money, advice, influence, and favors. In exchange, they shielded and even rewarded him,” providing lucrative tax breaks worth millions of dollars, they wrote.
Most troubling, they said, was that officials from the islands “protected Epstein, fostering the perfect conditions for Epstein’s criminal conduct to continue undetected.”
The lawyers added: “For two decades, and for long after JPMC exited Epstein as a client, the entity that most directly failed to protect public safety and most actively facilitated and benefited from Epstein’s continued criminal activity was the plaintiff in this case — the USVI government itself.”
The Virgin Islands, where Epstein had an estate, sued JPMorgan last year, saying its investigation revealed that the financial services giant enabled Epstein’s recruiters to pay victims and was “indispensable to the operation and concealment of the Epstein trafficking enterprise.”