The U.S. Virgin Islands’ attorney general has filed a lawsuit against the investment banking company JP Morgan, alleging that it “turned a blind eye” to money and clients brought in by millionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking operation.
Epstein — who was arrested on child sex trafficking charges in July 2019 and then died in prison under questionable circumstances one month later — owned the Little St. James island in the U.S. Virgin Islands territory. There, his accusers say, he trafficked and raped girls as young as age 14 alongside a wealthy group of friends and associates.
In the lawsuit, U.S. Virgin Islands’ Attorney General Denise George said that JP Morgan “knowingly facilitated, sustained, and concealed the human trafficking network operated by Jeffrey Epstein” and “financially benefitted from this participation,” Insider reported.
The lawsuit alleges that one of Epstein’s accounts with the company, named Southern Trust, was “a conduit for payment to foreign women, credit cards, airplanes, and other instrumentalities.” The company failed to comply with “red flag” laws that would’ve required its employees to investigate questionable payments, the lawsuit alleges. JP Morgan’s senior-level employees “advocated and approved” of this oversight, the lawsuit claims.
Epstein — who had connections to former Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton as well as British Royal Prince Andrew — was found hanging and dead in his prison cell on August 9, 2019. Though his death was ruled a suicide, the two cameras in front of his cell reportedly malfunctioned on the night of his death, according to Reuters, raising suspicions that he may have been murdered.
“President Joe Biden signed into law Tuesday (the bipartisan Prison Camera Reform Act) a bill requiring the federal Bureau of Prisons to overhaul outdated security systems and fix broken surveillance cameras after rampant staff sexual abuse, inmate escapes and high-profile deaths,” the Associated Press reported.
The bill requires the U.S. Bureau of Prisons to evaluate its security cameras, radios, and public address systems at 122 facilities and to repair them within three years.
In related “Broken prison camera systems are enabling corruption, misconduct and abuse,” said the legislation’s sponsor, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga. “That’s why I brought Republicans and Democrats together to pass my Prison Camera Reform Act, which is now law.”