Bank fined £120m over Epstein’s ‘cash to Russian models’
DEUTSCHE Bank has been fined £120million after it allowed paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to make suspicious payments worth millions with minimal scrutiny.
New York’s finance regulator yesterday accused the bank of turning a blind eye to payments to Russian models, vast sums handed to female associates for university fees and money wired to women with Eastern European names.
Germany’s largest bank, which also has a major presence in the UK, processed millions of pounds of transactions between Epstein and people alleged to be his co-conspirators in sexually abusing young women and children, an investigation found.
As part of a major probe into the bank’s dealings with Prince Andrew’s former friend, The New York State Department of Financial Services said that transactions were ‘consistent with public allegations of prior wrongdoing’.
The payments to women came to more than £2.07million over several years, the regulator discovered.
The department added: ‘Whether or to what extent these payments or that cash was used by Mr Epstein to cover up old crimes, or to facilitate new ones, or for some other purpose are questions that must be left to the criminal authorities.
‘But the fact that they were suspicious should have been obvious to bank personnel at various levels.’
Epstein, a convicted paedophile who took his own life in jail while awaiting trial, abused scores of young women at homes across the world.
New York investigators said money held in Epstein’s accounts at the bank had been sent to ‘Russian models, payments for women’s school tuition, hotel and rent expenses’.
It added that money had also been wired ‘directly to numerous women with Eastern European surnames’.
Vast sums were also withdrawn, with officials noting that £80,000 had once been taken out in one go.
When the bank queried this with Epstein’s lawyer, its officials were told the funds were for ‘tipping and household expenses’. Over around four years ‘periodic suspicious cash withdrawals’ came to a total of more than £640,000, the New York department said.
Epstein paid scores of women for massages, which turned into sexual abuse and in some cases rape. The regulator said the many irregular transactions should have been scrutinised under anti-money-laundering rules,
Other sums paid out include more than £5.6million in settlements, and £4.8million in lawyers’ fees, for what appeared to be the legal expenses of Epstein and his co-conspirators. Deutsche was told it had allowed ‘significant compliance failures’ to occur in its dealings with Epstein.
New York superintendent of financial services Linda Lacewell said: ‘Despite knowing Mr Epstein’s terrible criminal history, the bank inexcusably failed to detect or prevent millions of dollars of suspicious transactions.’
Deutsche had questioned ‘very few problematic transactions’ when it came to Epstein, the regulator found. Even when it did, these ‘were usually cleared without satisfactory explanation’. In an internal memo from the bank’s boss Christian Sewing yesterday said: ‘Today serves as a reminder of how vigilant we must remain.’
A Deutsche spokesman said: ‘We acknowledge our error of onboarding Epstein in 2013 and the weaknesses in our processes, and have learnt from our mistakes and shortcomings.’
Deutsche had contacted and co-operated with law enforcement immediately after Epstein’s arrest last year on child sex trafficking charges, the spokesman added.