The US Virgin Islands has issued a subpoena to Elon Musk for documents related to its lawsuit against JP Morgan over the investment bank’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, according to a court filing.
The filing in the US District Court in Manhattan revealed that the Virgin Islands believes Epstein may have referred “or tried to refer” Mr Musk to JP Morgan as a client, and had been trying to serve the Tesla CEO with a subpoena since April.
The Caribbean island nation hired a private investigator to locate Mr Musk’s address and tried to contact him through an attorney who had been served in previous federal cases involving the billionaire, the filing states.
According to the filing, the Virgin Islands said it “did not receive a response confirming or denying his authority”.
Process servers also tried unsuccessfully to locate Mr Musk at a Tesla business address, according to the filing.
The Virgin Islands asked Judge Jed Rakoff to authorise them to serve Mr Musk with a subpoena through “alternative service”, which could involve taking out a newspaper advertisement to alert him.
The Independent has contacted Tesla for comment.
The Virgin Islands sued JP Morgan in a lawsuit in Manhattan late last year accusing the investment giant of turning a blind eye to his decades-long sex abuse and trafficking of young girls.
Several of Epsteins’ alleged victims took out a civil lawsuit that made similar claims against JP Morgan last year.
The USVI lawsuit’s scope has broadened significantly in the past month with subpoenas being issued to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Hyatt Hotels executive chairman Thomas Pritzker and real estate mogul Mortimer Zuckerman.
JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon is due to be deposed for the Virgin Islands and Epstein victims’ lawsuits on 26 May.
The investment bank has denied any wrongdoing.
A medical examiner found Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 at the age of 66 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
In November, Epstein’s estate agreed to pay $105m to the US Virgin Islands government to settle a separate lawsuit that the late paedophile used his private island in the archipelago for sex-trafficking.
Two private US Virgin Islands formerly owned by Epstein — Great Saint James and Little Saint James — were sold to billionaire banker Stephen Deckoff earlier this month.
