Epstein Victim May Pursue Claims Against Two Wall St. Executives

Seeing this article leaves me wondering what went through the minds of Staley and Black when confronted with the temptation of having sex with an underage girl, which they absolutely knew was not only a crime, but a rotten thing to do to that child? Even more, what made them think they’d be safe in doing so? That it would never come back to bite them? Bad decision right? And doesn’t it always come down to exactly just that! The decision we make in any given moment, in any given circumstance! In this case, they now have one literally for the record books, that they will be regretting for many, many moons. My guess would be that nobody ever effectively taught them, that the popular saying “What Goes Around Comes Around,” is more than clever words and actually, an irrefutable Law of Physics!

A “carve out” provision allows at least one sexual abuse victim of Jeffrey Epstein who settled with his estate to pursue claims against Leon Black and James Staley. Other victims may follow.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/business/epstein-victims-carveout-settlements.html?smid=em-share

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Epstein Victim May Pursue Claims Against Two Wall St. Executives

A “carve out” provision allows at least one sexual abuse victim of Jeffrey Epstein who settled with his estate to pursue claims against Leon Black and James Staley. Other victims may follow.

At least one longtime sexual abuse victim of Jeffrey Epstein who received a monetary settlement from his estate can also pursue separate claims against two powerful former Wall Street executives who had ties to the convicted sex offender, according to two people briefed on the matter.

Richard Kahn, an executor of Mr. Epstein’s estate, testified in a deposition in May that the victim’s settlement included a “carve out” provision involving Leon Black, a billionaire private equity investor, and James E. Staley, a former top executive at JPMorgan Chase and Barclays, said the people, who were briefed on the deposition and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

The exceptions made for Mr. Black and Mr. Staley show how the two men continue to be dogged by their social and business dealings with Mr. Epstein four years after he killed himself in a federal jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The arrangement could set a precedent for other victims of Mr. Epstein, potentially exposing Mr. Black and Mr. Staley to further scrutiny and liability.

“She was a victim, potentially, to these individuals,” Mr. Kahn said in the deposition, according to one of the people. Mr. Kahn said that Mr. Epstein’s estate agreed to the carve-out provision so that the unnamed woman could potentially sue for “harms that she incurred.”

In the deposition, Mr. Kahn, who was Mr. Epstein’s longtime accountant, said at least one other victim had sought a similar carve out from the estate, according to the person. He suggested in the testimony, without providing details, that other victims might have asked for the provision with regard to other men, the person said.

It was unclear from Mr. Kahn’s deposition whether either of the women had pursued claims against Mr. Black or Mr. Staley, or what their specific claims might be, the people briefed on the deposition said.

In settling claims with victims, Mr. Epstein’s estate had sought to limit the potential for litigation against anyone with ties to Mr. Epstein. A settlement carve out provides a victim with a limited exception from such a broad release to pursue other litigation.

Both Mr. Black, a co-founder of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, and Mr. Staley had been frequent visitors to Mr. Epstein’s Manhattan residence. Mr. Black paid Mr. Epstein $158 million for tax and estate planning services — outsize payments that are now drawing scrutiny from the Senate Finance Committee.

Susan Estrich, a lawyer for Mr. Black, said the leak of Mr. Kahn’s deposition testimony “is baseless character assassination” involving “anonymous women who have never brought a claim against Mr. Black.”

Lawyers for Mr. Staley did not respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Mr. Kahn declined to comment.

The deposition from Mr. Kahn was in connection with a class-action lawsuit filed last year by Mr. Epstein’s victims against JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, and a related lawsuit against the bank by the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Leon Black, wearing a suit and a white shirt and pale blue tie, speaks while gesticulating with both hands against a blurred blue background.
The carve-out arrangement could set a precedent for other victims, potentially exposing Leon Black, above, and Mr. Staley to more scrutiny and liability.Credit…Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

The lawsuits contend that the bank turned a blind eye to Mr. Epstein’s trafficking of teenage girls and young women to and from his residences in the Virgin Islands, Manhattan, Florida and New Mexico because he was a wealthy client with famous and powerful friends.

In June, JPMorgan agreed to pay $290 million to settle the class-action lawsuit, but it continues to contest the suit by the Virgin Islands, which seeks $190 million in damages. JPMorgan is also suing Mr. Staley in connection with that suit, claiming he could be liable for damages.

In a court filing on Monday, JPMorgan said it continued to do business with Mr. Epstein because it relied on Mr. Staley’s “representations that Epstein had ‘turned the page’ on his past conduct” — a reference to Mr. Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida of soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl.

An internal review of Mr. Staley’s company emails, conducted by JPMorgan following Mr. Epstein’s 2019 arrest, found that the two men had shared sexually suggestive emails.

Lawyers for Mr. Staley, in court papers, have said he did nothing wrong and was unaware of any sex trafficking by Mr. Epstein.

In 2021, Mr. Black resigned as chairman and chief executive of Apollo over his ties to Mr. Epstein. This year, he quietly agreed to pay $62.5 million to the Virgin Islands to head off a potential lawsuit that would have claimed his large payments to Mr. Epstein helped finance his sex trafficking operation in the U.S. territory.

Mr. Black is also being sued by two other women who say they were raped by him roughly two decades ago at Mr. Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. Ms. Estrich called those allegations “false and frivolous.”

Lawyers for Mr. Epstein’s victims have estimated that he sexually abused hundreds of teenage girls and young women over two decades. More than 125 women have received $153 million in settlement payments from either a restitution fund set up by the estate or in deals negotiated directly by the estate — as was the case with the two women Mr. Kahn was asked about during his deposition.

 

 


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Epstein Victim May Pursue Claims Against Two Wall St. Executives

Epstein Victim May Pursue Claims Against Two Wall St. Executives

…And here is a genuine story about how even minimal effort to bring comfort to another human can result in outsized and wonderful results. How different the world might seem to many if that kind of true effort actually ran wild! It is a thought worth considering. It is also a siren call to each of us!

New research shows small gestures matter even more than we may think.

I wonder about when this train actually went off the rail and Balwani and Holmes both knew it. It reminds me somewhat of Bernie Madoff’s $20 Billion deception in that if Bernie had fessed up when his performance first went south and he tried to cover it up, only to make it worse, he might largely have been forgiven and returned to his original trading business. But he just couldn’t do that and as time went on…well we know the result.

Was there a similar trajectory for this pair? A time when they looked at each other and said, “Uh oh!” Not that it matters really. Somewhere along the way they knew what was going down and kept it going for as long as they could. Now have to face the music as eventually, always is the case. It is simply “The Law of Cause and Effect” unfolding. Hopefully for them there will be less tragic endings than Bernie. It depends on how they handle what they have wrought! We’ll see.