(LifeSiteNews) — A federal judge has approved a settlement awarding $290 million to Jeffrey Epstein’s victims of sexual abuse.
It will be paid by JPMorgan Chase, following claims that the bank, which did business with the financier, repeatedly ignored warnings about Epstein’s abuse of underage girls and young women.
“The settlement closes an important chapter in the Epstein saga centering on the role of big banks in enabling his conduct to continue for nearly two decades,” wrote Matthew Goldstein for the New York Times.
“The money being paid by JPMorgan, the nation’s biggest bank, could provide compensation to nearly 200 victims of Mr. Epstein, according to a legal filing. JPMorgan and lawyers for the victims reached a preliminary settlement in June, averting a potential civil trial in federal court in Manhattan,” according to the Times report.
“Fifteen unidentified victims submitted written declarations in support of the deal,” the Times continued. “Some, including one who said she was just 13 when Mr. Epstein first sexually assaulted her, wrote about continuing to suffer from depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and eating disorders.”
JPMorgan Chase had previously agreed to pay $75 million in a separate case to Epstein’s victims and to the U.S. Virgin Islands where Epstein had maintained a home, bringing the grand total to $365 million.
The U.S. Virgin Islands court filing last winter said that JPMorgan Chase Bank had “facilitated and sustained” Jeffrey Epstein’s expansive sex trafficking network.
“Far from the so-called ‘ordinary’ banking services JPMorgan claims it provided to Epstein, JPMorgan broke every rule to facilitate Epstein’s sex-trafficking and feed off his wealth and connections,” the legal complaint alleged.
That court case said that the enabling of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation didn’t just occur at arms-length, something that would have allowed the banking behemoth to claim plausible deniability.
READ: JP Morgan Chase processed over $1 billion in transactions from Jeffrey Epstein, attorney says
Bill Gates’ ties to Epstein and former JPMorgan executive remain troubling
Epstein, who allegedly committed suicide while in police custody in 2019, had cultivated relationships with some of the world’s richest and most powerful personalities, including Peter Thiel, Bill Clinton, Britain’s Prince Andrew, and a host of others.
Many of those ties formed after Epstein had previously been convicted as a sex offender more than a decade before for soliciting sex from a minor.
Perhaps the most famous among the globally recognized names that Epstein brought into his orbit is the world’s fourth richest man, Bill Gates.
Gates had been introduced to Epstein via James “Jes” Staley, a top executive at JPMorgan Chase in 2011, ostensibly to create a global health investment fund.
Documents released in May revealed plans by Epstein to persuade JPMorgan to work with Gates on an elite fund in which donors would contribute $100 million each. In April 2011, Gates was scheduled for a dinner with former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Jes Staley, who at the time was the head of JPMorgan’s investment bank.
Epstein proposed a means by which potential investors who had a shady past and were hesitant to use a bank seen as a “quasi US govt arm” could be leveraged.
He suggested the possibility of anonymous giving while maintaining donors’ membership in the elite “club.”
After the Epstein story grabbed headlines around the world in 2019, Bill Gates attempted to deny his connection to Epstein, telling the Wall Street Journal at the time, “I didn’t have any business relationship or friendship with him.”
Despite Gate’s protestations, documents reviewed by the New York Times showed a clearly established relationship between the two.
Beginning in 2011, Gates met with Epstein on numerous occasions — including at least three times at Epstein’s palatial Manhattan townhouse, and at least once staying late into the night, according to interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with the relationship, as well as documents reviewed by the New York Times.
Employees of Gates’s foundation also paid multiple visits to Epstein’s mansion. And Epstein spoke with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and JPMorgan Chase about a proposed multibillion-dollar charitable fund — an arrangement that had the potential to generate enormous fees for the financier.
“[Epstein’s] lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me,” Gates told colleagues in 2011 via email.
The connections between Gates, Epstein, JP Morgan’s Staley, remain troubling.
Staley enjoyed a close personal relationship with Epstein and may have benefitted from his sex trafficking of young women and girls. A court filing in the Virgin Islands case noted:
Between 2008 and 2012, Staley exchanged approximately 1,200 emails with Epstein from his JP Morgan email account. These communications show a close personal relationship and ‘profound’ friendship between the two men and even suggest that Staley may have been involved in Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.
They also reveal that Staley corresponded with Epstein while Epstein was incarcerated and visited Epstein’s Virgin Islands residence on multiple occasions. Epstein even advised Staley in connection with Staley’s salary negotiations at JP Morgan in July of 2008.
Gates’s ex-wife Melinda cited his friendship with Epstein in the couple’s 2021 divorce proceedings.
Writing about the connection between Gates, Staley, and Epstein, Seamus Bruner, author of the about-to-be published book, Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, Their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life, wrote for Breitbart. “The existence of Epstein’s so-called “client list” has never been confirmed. But the names and account holders involved in the $1 billion “human trafficking” transfers, which JPMorgan admitted were linked to Epstein, would be revealing.”