The wife of the then-governor of the US Virgin Islands is alleged to have consulted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein in 2011 about new sex crime legislation three years before he pled guilty to soliciting a minor, a legal brief has stated.
The brief has been filed by JPMorgan Chase as it battles the government of the US Virgin Islands, which has been attempting to lay the blame on the bank for allegedly being aware that it was profiting off the convicted sex offender’s trafficking, according to Law & Crime.
JP Morgan Chase has been defending its case by making allegations against the local government of the US territory. The most recent legal brief in the case states that Cecile de Jongh, the former first lady of the Virgin Islands, where the disgraced financier kept a residence, was in contact with him in 2011.
In May of that year, the local legislature was looking at changing its sex offender monitoring laws, and in its brief, JPMorgan quoted Ms de Jongh consulting Epstein on the language of the legislation.
“This is the suggested language; will it work for you?” she’s alleged to have asked Epstein, the brief states.
“We should add out of country for more than 7 days, otherwise I could not go for a day trip to Tortola, at the last minute,” Epstein supposedly responded. Tortola is the largest island of the British Virgin Islands.
Ms De Jongh allegedly also helped arrange visas for victims of Epstein and asked for political donations, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Epstein appeared worried in 2011 about the transparency measures in the new legislation which may have made some information “accessible by the press,” according to the brief.
“If we are not careful. A list of who I stay with should violate my privacy,” he wrote at the time. “Restrict my business and livelihood.”
Ms de Jongh wrote back that she didn’t “want to email back and forth,” and added that the deadline for the legislation was approaching.
The bank claims that Ms de Jongh was an ally to Epstein, but also that she was on the payroll of his companies in the Virgin Islands, and that in addition to a salary, she also received bonuses and added benefits.
Epstein, alongside his lawyer at the time, Maria Hodge, failed in their efforts to lobby the Virgin Islands Justice Department and the office of the attorney general, the filing notes.
“I know this was a horrible week and I am really sorry about how things panned out,” Ms de Jongh wrote in June 2011 after the legislation passed. “Not being able to take someone at their word is incredibly frustrating. However, all is not lost and we will figure something out by coming up with a game plan to get around these obstacles.”
The plan was to lobby local senators to “facilitate Epstein’s easy travel to and from” the US Virgin Islands, according to the bank.
JPMorgan recently agreed to a $290m settlement following a class action lawsuit filed by an anonymous Epstein survivor, allowing the bank to avoid a trial which may have divulged embarrassing details regarding the actions of bank executives, Law & Crime noted.
Brad Edwards, a lawyer who has represented Epstein survivors, said a deal with the government of the Virgin Islands aided the survivors in reaching the settlement with the bank.
“The information and support the US Virgin Islands and its legal team provided to the survivors was enormously valuable, and we recognize the importance of the government’s continued litigation against JPMorgan Chase to prevent future crimes,” Mr Edwards said in a statement, according to Law & Crime.
The office of the Virgin Islands attorney general has said that it will not settle the case with the bank before the trial set for October.
The government said that the bank has pushed “hyperbolic conspiracy theories” about the territory to “distract and deflect”.
The government has asked Senior US District Judge Jed Rakoff to strike intimations regarding hypocrisy as an affirmative defence.
Virgin Islands Attorney General spokesperson Venetia Velazquez said in a statement that “JPMorgan Chase has cherry-picked and mischaracterized Epstein’s interactions with US Virgin Islands officials and residents in an attempt to distract and shift blame away from its role in facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s heinous crimes”.
“JPMorgan Chase seeks to attack the people of the Virgin Islands for not discovering the very information that bank executives refused to share. JPMorgan Chase had a legal responsibility to report the evidence in its possession of Epstein’s human trafficking, it failed to do so, and it should be held accountable for violating the law,” she added, according to Law & Crime.
But one of the bank’s lawyers, Felicia Ellsworth, wrote in the legal brief that “tellingly, USVI’s motion seeks to strike only those specific defenses that threaten to expose its relationship with Epstein”.
JPMorgan is also claiming that Epstein had “close ties” to current Virgin Islands Governor Democrat Albert Bryan.
Mr Bryan fired the former Attorney General Denise Goerge who initially filed the case against JPMorgan as a prosecutor.
Mitchell Epner, a former sex trafficking prosecutor told Law & Crime that if a federal judge rules that the claims made by the bank can be used in a trial, they will use the information to try to get the Virgin Islands government to negotiate.
“It is standard in litigation to use the process to disincentivize the opponent to continue,” he said.
Unless a settlement is reached, the trial is set to begin on 23 October.
