JPMorgan CEO Dimon faces deposition in Jeffrey Epstein lawsuits in New York

Both Demon and JPMorgan had lost an effort to dismiss the suits by the plaintiffs — an anonymous Epstein accuser and the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands. However, both of them — Demon and JPMorgan — have denied any wrongdoing and liability in the cases.

According to the suits, US’ biggest bank JP Morgan kept Epstein as a customer even after knowing that he was being investigated for sexually abusing underage girls in Florida. Despite Epstein pleaded guilty in a state charge there in 2008 to paying for sex from a minor, the firm kept association with him.

Meanwhile, JPMorgan has been accused in the complaints in U.S. District Court in Manhattan of doing so in order to keep Epstein despite internal concerns about his slimy reputation, added the report.

The Virgin Islands’ suit claims Epstein used frequent cash withdrawals to pay for young women to travel to the American territory so that he and others can abuse them at his residence on a private island he owned.

“Human trafficking was the [principal] business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JPMorgan,” CNBC quoted the Virgin Islands’ suit as saying.

As per details, Dimon’s deposition is being taken in private, so the questions asked and the answers given would only become public if they are used in court filings and proceedings.

Apart from this, the Virgin Islands has also issued a flurry of subpoenas in which it sought documents related to Epstein and JPMorgan from a number of high-profile people the government suspects Epstein tried to recruit as fellow clients of the bank.

The fellow clients include — Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, former Disney executive Michael Ovitz, Hyatt Hotels executive chairman Thomas Pritzker and Mort Zuckerman, the billionaire real estate investor.

The new development of Dimon’s deposition arrived a week after Deutsche Bank had agreed to pay $75 million to Epstein victims in order to settle a would-be class action lawsuit by one of his accusers.

After JPMorgan severed ties with Epstein in 2013 — keeping him as a client for 15 years — Deutsche Bank had taken on Epstein as a customer.

When Epstein was a client in JPMorgan from 1998 through 2013, Dimon had not reviewed Epstein’s accounts.

Though Epstein died six years later from suicide in a New York jail, which is a month after federal authorities charged him with trafficking girls for sex.

Updated: 27 May 2023, 02:25 AM IST