JPMorgan Chase introduced a agreement Monday with the sufferers of Jeffrey Epstein who had accused the financial institution of being the monetary conduit that allowed the financier to proceed running a intercourse trafficking operation.
Epstein was once arrested in 2019 on federal fees accusing him of paying underage ladies loads of greenbacks in money for massages after which molesting them at his houses in Florida and New York. He was once discovered useless in prison on Aug. 10 of that yr, at age 66. A scientific examiner dominated his demise a suicide.
The lawsuit filed in New york federal court docket in November sought to carry JPMorgan financially responsible for Epstein’s decades-long abuse of teen ladies and younger girls. A similar lawsuit has been filed within the U.S. Virgin Islands.
“All of us now remember the fact that Epstein’s conduct was once monstrous, and we imagine this agreement is in the most efficient passion of all events, particularly the survivors, who suffered unattainable abuse by the hands of this guy,” JPMorgan Chase stated in a written observation early Monday.
In step with the proceedings, JPMorgan equipped Epstein loans and incessantly allowed him to withdraw massive sums of money from 1998 thru August 2013 even supposing it was once conscious about his participation in intercourse trafficking. The nameless sufferer, known as Jane Doe, stated she was once sexually abused via Epstein from 2006 and 2013.
The financial institution persisted to depend Epstein as a consumer even though Epstein was once arrested and pled to blame to intercourse crimes in 2008 in Florida.
The agreement with Jane Doe arrives at the identical day {that a} pass judgement on granted Doe’s lawsuit class-action standing, that means long term awards could be granted to Doe and different sufferers.
“Any affiliation with him was once a mistake and we be apologetic about it,” the financial institution stated in a ready observation. “We’d by no means have persisted to do industry with him if we believed he was once the usage of our financial institution in any strategy to lend a hand dedicate heinous crimes.”
The agreement comes more or less two weeks after JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon testified in a deposition for the case, the place he denied figuring out about Epstein and his crimes till the financier was once arrested in 2019, in step with a transcript of the videotaped deposition launched remaining month.
Each proceedings have been filed after New York state in November enacted a brief legislation letting grownup sufferers of sexual abuse to sue others for the abuse they suffered, despite the fact that the abuse befell way back.
Phrases of the agreement weren’t disclosed. Proceedings are nonetheless pending between the U.S. Virgin Islands and JPMorgan Chase, and the financial institution remains to be pursuing its lawsuit in opposition to JPMorgan former government Jes Staley.
The financial institution has denied the allegations and sued Staley, announcing he concealed Epstein’s crimes to stay him as a consumer. Staley left JPMorgan in 2013 to later grow to be CEO of the British financial institution Barclays. Staley stepped down from that function in 2021 because of his prior dating with Epstein.
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AP Creator Michael Hill contributed to this document from Albany.