Bank of America questioned about Epstein payments in tax investigation

A U.S. Senate committee investigating the tax avoidance work that Jeffrey Epstein, the registered sex offender, did for private equity mogul Leon Black has questioned Bank of America over Black’s hefty payments to Epstein, according to a letter viewed by The New York Times.

This month, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-ore., the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, sent the bank a letter asking about the extent of due diligence it conducted before processing $158 million in payments Black made to Epstein from 2012-17 for that tax work.

The letter also asked whether any bank employees had raised concerns about the purpose of those payments. They included fees paid to Epstein for advising on a sophisticated trust that saved Black more than $1 billion in taxes. Banks are required to file suspicious activity reports, or SARS, with financial regulators.

Black’s decadeslong business dealings and personal relationship with Epstein have dogged him ever since Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019. (Epstein hanged himself in a federal jail a month after his arrest.) Black, a cofounder of Apollo Global Management, with a net worth of $13 billion, ultimately stepped down from all leadership posts because of the controversy.

In the letter, dated April 4, Wyden said the committee believed the payments to Epstein for tax work came from accounts Black had at Bank of America. He also asked whether any art transactions involving Epstein and Black, a wellknown art collector, had raised concerns internally.

Whit Clay, a spokesperson for Black, said, “The transactions the committee reviewed were both lawful and conceived, vetted and executed by reputable law firms and tax advisers.” He added that Black “has paid all taxes owed to the government.”

The role of big banks in facilitating Epstein’s sex trafficking of teenage girls and young women came under scrutiny last year when Jpmorgan Chase agreed to pay $290 million to more than 100 of his victims, and Deutsche Bank reached a $75 million settlement with many of those victims.

Last summer, the Senate committee announced that it was investigating the work Epstein did for Black as part of an examination of legal “tax dodging” schemes used by the ultrarich. The committee had said it wanted to learn more about Epstein’s “extraordinary compensation” package and the specific details of the tax avoidance strategies Epstein designed for Black.

Wyden, in the letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, said the committee was trying to determine whether the solutions Epstein came up with to help Black avoid billions of dollars in taxes were “executed in a manner consistent with federal tax laws.”

A spokesperson for Bank of America declined to comment.

When the federal authorities raided Epstein’s residence in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2019, shortly after his death, they found a raft of Bank of America bank statements belonging to Black, according to documents from Epstein’s estate that were reviewed by the Times.