(Headline USA) JPMorgan Chase reportedly reached an agreement this week to settle a lawsuit from victims of Jeffrey Epstein.
The mega-bank has not yet released details regarding the “agreement in principle,” but a “person familiar” with the deal said JPMorgan will pay a total of $290 million to the victims, who were a part of a class action lawsuit against the company. There were roughly 100 women involved with the suit, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The lawsuit alleged the bank handled Epstein’s finances and repeatedly ignored warnings about Epstein’s criminal enterprises, specifically his role in the sex trafficking of young women and girls.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon was called to sit for a deposition with lawyers for the victims last month and insisted that he had no part in handling Epstein’s accounts.
“Our CEO reaffirmed after his deposition that, as he has previously said, that he never met with him, never emailed him, does not recall ever discussing his accounts internally, and was not involved in any decisions about his account,” JP Morgan said in a statement. “There are millions and millions of emails and other documents that have been produced in this case and not one comes close to even suggesting that he had any role in decisions about Epstein’s accounts.”
However, several emails involving JPMorgan executive Mary Erdoes paint a picture of a sodrid relationship between herself and Epstein — even after he was convicted.
“While we regret any association with Jeffrey Epstein, we would never have continued to do business with him if we believed he was using our bank to commit heinous crimes,” JPMorgan spokesperson Darin Oduyoye said in a statement. “Mary Erdoes and others exited him as a client six years before he was charged with human trafficking.”
JPMorgan cut financial ties with Epstein in 2013, at which point he moved to the German bank Deutsche Bank AG as his main financial institution.
