Bank of America has reached a $72.5m (£54.6m) settlement in a lawsuit brought on behalf of victims of Jeffrey Epstein, who had accused the bank of facilitating his sex trafficking operation.
The proposed class-action lawsuit was filed in October by a Florida woman who says she was abused by Epstein “on at least 100 occasions” between 2011 and 2019 and held two accounts at Bank of America at the direction of his business team.
It alleged that the bank had “a plethora of information regarding Epstein’s sex trafficking operation but chose profit over protecting the victims”.
In the court documents, Bank of America says the settlement is “no admission of liability” or “wrongdoing” on its part.
The settlement was reached earlier this month, but details of the deal had not been revealed until documents were filed on Friday in a New York federal court. They now await a judge’s approval.
Sigrid McCawley, a lawyer for the victims, told the BBC in a statement earlier this month that the resolution was “one more step on the road to much deserved justice”.
It marks the third such settlement by a major bank, after JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank agreed to pay out $290m (£218m) and $75m respectively.
The lawsuit, brought on behalf of a “Jane Doe”, cites a record of “incredibly alarming and erratic banking behavior” in her own Bank of America accounts, which were used by Epstein’s team. She says she met Epstein in Russia in 2011 and was controlled and sexually abused by him up until his death in jail in August 2019.
Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide, and Jane Doe called it her “ultimate escape”.
The lawsuit also points to more than $150m paid to Epstein by billionaire Leon Black, co-founder of Apollo Global, for “purported ‘tax and estate planning advice'”, via Black’s Bank of America account.
Black, who stepped down from Apollo amid scrutiny over his ties to Epstein, has denied wrongdoing. He was questioned as part of the case last week.
Bank of America had previously urged the court to dismiss the lawsuit, saying it had provided routine services to people who at the time had no known links to Epstein, calling the complaint “threadbare and meritless”.
“While we stand by our prior statements made in the filings in this case, including that Bank of America did not facilitate sex trafficking crimes, this resolution allows us to put this matter behind us and provides further closure for the plaintiffs,” Bank of America told the BBC in a statement on Saturday.
By BBC News
Email your news TIPS to Editor@Kahawatungu.com — this is our only official communication channel
