Manhattan District Judge Jed Rakoff has ruled that JPMorgan Chase can be sued by the Virgin Islands over Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking claims.
A New York federal judge on Monday ruled that the U.S. Virgin Islands and women who accuse the late investor Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse can proceed with lawsuits claiming that JPMorgan Chase knowingly benefited from participating in Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme.
In addition, the judge allowed parts of a separate, similar lawsuit by Epstein’s accusers against Deutsche Bank, including the claim that that bank also knowingly benefited.
The four-page ruling by Manhattan District Judge Jed Rakoff came in response to motions from JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank to dismiss the three lawsuits.
While Rakoff agreed to dismiss multiple counts of each of the cases, he allowed the other explosive counts to remain and to head toward trial. The judge wrote that he would issue an opinion explaining the reasons for his decisions “in due course.”
Epstein, who killed himself in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal criminal child sex-trafficking charges, was a JPMorgan client from 1998 through 2013.
The last five years of that relationship came after he pleaded guilty in Florida to soliciting an underage prostitute. At a court hearing on Thursday before Rakoff, a lawyer for the Virgin Islands said JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon “knew in 2008 that his billionaire client was a sex trafficker,” a claim disputed by an attorney for the bank.
The judge in the US Virgin Islands / Epstein accuser litigation against JPMorgan has ruled that the bank must produce documents related to CEO Jamie Dimon, ruling against the bank’s argument that Dimon isn’t relevant to the case because “He was not involved in any decisions regarding Epstein’s account…”
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