By KEN SWEET and MICHELLE CHAPMAN (AP Business Writers)
JPMorgan Chase introduced a $290 million tentative settlement Monday with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein who had accused the financial institution of being the monetary conduit that allowed the financier to proceed working a intercourse trafficking operation.
Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal fees accusing him of paying underage women for massages after which molesting them at his properties in Florida and New York. He was discovered useless in jail in August of that yr, at age 66. A medical expert dominated his loss of life a suicide.
The lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court docket in November sought to carry JPMorgan financially accountable for Epstein’s decades-long abuse of teenage women and younger ladies. A associated lawsuit has been filed within the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The proposed settlement comes roughly two weeks after JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon testified in a deposition for the case, the place he denied realizing about Epstein and his crimes till the financier was arrested in 2019, in response to a transcript of the videotaped deposition launched final month.
“We all now understand that Epstein’s behavior was monstrous, and we believe this settlement is in the best interest of all parties, especially the survivors, who suffered unimaginable abuse at the hands of this man,” JPMorgan Chase stated in a written assertion early Monday.
The proposed settlement, which should nonetheless be authorised by the decide within the case, totals $290 million, in response to lead plaintiff lawyer David Boies.
According to the lawsuits, JPMorgan offered Epstein loans and repeatedly allowed him to withdraw giant sums of money from 1998 via August 2013 although it was conscious of his participation in intercourse trafficking. The nameless sufferer, known as Jane Doe, stated she was sexually abused by Epstein from 2006 and 2013.
Also on Monday, a decide dominated in favor of creating Doe’s lawsuit right into a class-action lawsuit for all victims of Epstein’s intercourse crimes.
“Money, which for far too long flowed with impunity between Jeffrey Epstein’s global sex trafficking enterprise and Wall Street’s leading banks, is decisively being used for good,” stated Sigrid McCawley, an lawyer for Jane Doe and different Epstein victims, in a ready assertion. “The settlements signal that financial institutions have an important role to play in spotting and shutting down sex trafficking.”
The financial institution continued to rely Epstein as a shopper although Epstein was arrested and pled responsible to intercourse crimes in 2008 in Florida.
“Any association with him was a mistake and we regret it,” the financial institution stated in a ready assertion. “We would never have continued to do business with him if we believed he was using our bank in any way to help commit heinous crimes.”
Both lawsuits had been filed after New York state in November enacted a short lived legislation letting grownup victims of sexual abuse to sue others for the abuse they suffered, even when the abuse occurred way back.
Lawsuits 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 govt Jes Staley.
The financial institution has denied the allegations and sued Staley, saying he hid Epstein’s crimes to maintain him as a shopper. 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 attributable to his prior relationship with Epstein.
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AP Writer Michael Hill contributed to this report from Albany. AP Writer Larry Neumeister contributed from New York.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”