by Pam Martens and Russ Martens at Wall Street on Parade
According to unsealed documents released this week by the U.S. Virgin Islands in its federal lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase over claims it facilitated Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of underage girls for more than a decade, the largest bank in the United States has a lot of explaining to do to the American people – and potentially to the criminal division of the U.S. Justice Department.
After Jeffrey Epstein was arrested by the U.S. Department of Justice on July 6, 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges, JPMorgan Chase – which had been Epstein’s banker from 1998 to 2013 – apparently decided to get a quick look at how much legal liability and reputational damage it might have if its labyrinthine client relationship and intimate and undisclosed business relationship with Epstein came to light.
The “top of the house” at JPMorgan Chase ordered an internal investigation in 2019 which was code named “Project Jeep.” The JE stood for Jeffrey; the EP for Epstein. Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, denied knowledge of Project Jeep in his deposition in the lawsuit in late May. An attorney for the Virgin Islands writes in a letter that there is documentation suggesting that Dimon is part of “top of the house.”
Project Jeep included almost two dozen pages of internal emails between Epstein and a host of JPMorgan executives, its private client bankers and licensed brokers, stretching from 2008 when Epstein began serving his first jail term for soliciting a minor for sex, to 2013 when JPMorgan says it severed its client relationship with Epstein. According to news reports, JPMorgan’s business relationships with Epstein continued long past 2013.
The emails are stomach-churning and humiliating for the U.S. banking system. They show a sex trafficker actually directing business strategies for JPMorgan’s investment bank and referring clients from around the world to JPMorgan Chase, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Peter Mandelson, Andrew Farkas, Boris Nikolic, science advisor to the Gates Foundation, Leon Black, former Chairman of Apollo Global Management, and many others.
According to a letter filed with the court by Linda Singer,…
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