NEW YORK, March 16 (Reuters) – Bank of America has settled a civil lawsuit brought by women who accused the bank of abetting their sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein, court records showed on Monday.
A proposed class-action lawsuit filed in October by a woman using the pseudonym Jane Doe accused the nation’s second-largest bank of ignoring suspicious financial transactions linked to Epstein despite an “overwhelming” amount of information about his crimes, putting profit over protecting victims.
Bank of America said that Doe only claimed to have provided routine services to people who had no known ties to Epstein at the time, and that any suggestion that she was more deeply involved was “convoluted and unsubstantiated.”
Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff ruled in January that Bank of America must face Doe’s claims that it knowingly profited from Epstein’s sex trafficking and obstructed enforcement of the federal Victims of Trafficking Protection Act. Rakoff still has to approve the settlement. Among the transactions Doe flagged were payments to Epstein from billionaire Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black.
Black resigned as CEO of Apollo in 2021 after an outside law firm discovered he had paid Epstein $158 million for tax and estate planning.
He denied wrongdoing and said he was unaware of Epstein’s criminal conduct.
Black was scheduled to be questioned under oath by attorneys for Doe and Bank of America on March 26. The deposition is not expected to continue due to the settlement. If Rakoff approves the deal, the trial scheduled for May 11 will also not take place.
Doe’s lawyers also sued Epstein’s other alleged sex-trafficking agents, reaching settlements of $290 million with JPMorgan Chase and $75 million with Deutsche Bank in 2023 on behalf of his accusers.
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. The New York Medical Examiner ruled his death a suicide.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
