Jeffrey Epstein appears in court in West Palm Beach, Fla., July 30, 2008. Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay $75 million to settle a lawsuit, Thursday, May 18, 2023, claiming that the German lender should have seen evidence of sex trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein when he was a client, according to lawyers for women who say they were abused by the late financier. (Uma Sanghvi/The Palm Beach Post via AP, File)
By Ken Sweet
JPMorgan Chase agreed Tuesday to pay $75 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands to settle claims that the bank enabled the sex trafficking acts committed by financier Jeffrey Epstein.
JPMorgan said that $55 million of the settlement will go toward local charities and assistance for victims. Another $20 million will go toward legal fees.
The Virgin Islands, where Epstein had an estate, sued JPMorgan last year, saying its investigation has 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."
In effect, the Virgin Islands had argued that JPMorgan had been complicit in Epstein's behavior and did not raise any red flags to law enforcement or bank regulators about Epstein being a “high risk” customer and making repeated large cash withdrawals.
The settlement averts a trial that had been set to start next month.
The bank also said it reached an confidential legal settlement with James “Jes” Staley, the former top JPMorgan executive who managed the Epstein account before leaving the the bank. JPMorgan sued Staley earlier this year, alleging that he covered up or minimized Epstein's wrongdoing in order to maintain the lucrative account.
JPMorgan had already agreed to pay $290 million in June in a class-action lawsuit that involved victims of Epstein's trafficking crimes.
Epstein died by suicide in a federal jail in 2019.
About 780,000 pressure washers sold at retailers like Home Depot are being recalled across the U.S. and Canada, due to a projectile hazard that has resulted in fractures and other injuries among some consumers.
President Donald Trump has fired one of two Democratic members of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to break a 2-2 tie ahead of the board considering the largest railroad merger ever proposed.
Ford is recalling more than 355,000 of its pickup trucks across the U.S. because of an instrument panel display failure that’s resulted in critical information, like warning lights and vehicle speed, not showing up on the dashboard.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is set to lead a protest march on Wall Street to urge corporate America to resist the Trump administration’s campaign to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The New York civil rights leader will join clergy, labor and community leaders Thursday in a demonstration through Manhattan’s Financial District that’s timed with the anniversary of the Civil Rights-era March on Washington in 1963. Sharpton called DEI the “civil rights fight of our generation." He and other Black leaders have called for boycotting American retailers that scaled backed policies and programs aimed at bolstering diversity and reducing discrimination in their ranks.
