NEW YORK: A class action lawsuit brought by victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse has been resolved with JPMorgan Chase.
When the dead financier was a client, the victims claimed that the bank encouraged him to engage in sex trafficking.
The largest bank in the country and the victims’ counsel announced in a joint statement that they “have informed the court that they have reached an agreement in principle to settle the putative class action lawsuit related to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.” The settlement’s value was not made public, and the accord is pending court approval.
The deal, according to the bank and the victims’ attorneys, is in everyone’s best interest, “especially the survivors who were the victims of Epstein’s terrible abuse.”
The US Virgin Islands and the bank are involved in litigation. Jes Staley, a former JPMorgan employee and former CEO of Barclays, is still the target of JPMorgan Chase’s lawsuit, which claims that he is substantially to blame for JPMorgan’s 15-year business partnership with Epstein.
Epstein’s victims had already settled with Deutsche Bank for $75 million.
Epstein was detained in 2019 on suspicion of trafficking kids for sex. He committed suicide in prison shortly after being arrested, according to the authorities.
Long before his arrest in 2019, Epstein was accused of sexual misbehaviour and pled guilty to two state prostitution crimes. He was sentenced to barely 13 months in jail. In order to maintain his business while he was in jail, he was freed during the day. Additionally, he made a sex offender registration and made reparation payments to the victims the FBI had identified.
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, testified in an eight-hour deposition in the case last month that he had never met or spoken with Epstein in person and that he was unaware in real time of bank compliance reviews of Epstein’s account and his criminal activity going back to 2006.
Dimon said that he was first became aware of the bank’s association with Epstein when he read news reports in 2019, just before Epstein was taken into custody in New York on federal charges.