JPMorgan Chase has hit back at the US Virgin Islands government after the latter brought in a lawsuit accusing the banking giant of empowering disgraced paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of teenage girls.
Lawyers representing the bank in the Manhattan federal court said the Virgin Islands was complicit in Epstein’s act and that high-ranking officials of the country were bought off by him.
“He gave them money, advice, influence, and favours. In exchange, they shielded and even rewarded him,” providing lucrative tax breaks worth millions of dollars, they wrote.
“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 lawyers added.
Reflecting on the statements from the defence, the US Virgin Islands attorney general’s office said it was an attempt to deflect the blame.
“This is an obvious attempt to shift blame away from JPMorgan Chase, which had a legal responsibility to report the evidence in its possession of Epstein’s human trafficking, and failed to do so,” read the statement.
Earlier, US Virgin Islands subpoenaed documents from billionaire Elon Musk as part of its lawsuit against the bank. Google co-founder Larry Page was also to be served the same legal document but the government failed to locate him.
The government said it had been unable to locate Page, who co-founded and co-owns Alphabet Inc, despite good faith attempts, which included hiring an investigative firm to search public record databases.
Jeffrey Epstein – a monster
Epstein was accused of sexually exploiting dozens of underage girls, some as young as 14, at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida between 2002 and 2005.
However, the majority of his sexual exploits took place on the 72-acre Little St. James Island which he purchased in 1998 for $7.95 million. He later bought the 160-acre Great St. James Island for $20 million in 2016.
Epstein was convicted in Florida in 2008 of paying young girls for massages, but served just 13 months in jail under a secret plea deal. He died in mysterious circumstances in the metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York with the authorities terming it a ‘suicide’.
(with inputs from agencies)
