Billionaire, Jeffrey Epstein financial relationship probed
Billionaire financier Leon Black, one of Wall Street’s most powerful executives, was facing questions from clients after Jeffrey Epstein was arrested last year on federal sex trafficking charges. The two men had known each other for decades, and investors of Black’s investment company, Apollo Global Management, wanted to know how close they had been.
Such questions were valid, Black said, according to a transcript of a call with analysts in July 2019. He said in a letter that same day to investors that he had hada “limited relationship” with Epstein, a convicted sex offender, and had consulted him “from time to time” on personal financial matters.
But their connection was deeper than Black let on: The two men often socialized and dined together, and Black was a lucrative client for Epstein over the final decade of his life.
Black wired Epstein at least $50 million in the years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution froma teenage girl, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with four people with knowledge of the transactions.
The transfers included $10 million to a foundation started by Epstein and consulting fees that were sufficiently unusual to draw scrutiny from Deutsche Bank, where Epstein kept his accounts. Two of the people said the total amount sent by Black to Epstein could be as high as $75million.
It was not clear what kind of services Epstein provided to Black, whose $9 billion fortune can buy him access to the best lawyers and accountants in the world. Epstein, though he styled himself as a “financial doctor” to wealthy clients, was a college dropout who had worked on Wall Street for just a few years, demonstrated no great skill as an investor.
“Mr. Black received personal trusts and estates planning advice as well as family office philanthropy and investment services from several financial and legal advisers, including Mr. Epstein, during a sixyear period, between 2012 and 2017,” said Stephanie Pillersdorf, a spokeswoman for Black. “The trusts and estate planning advice was vetted by leading auditors and lawfirms.”
The business relationship ended in 2018 because of a “fee dispute,” she said.
“Mr. Black continues to be appalled by the conduct that led to the criminal charges against Mr. Epstein, and he deeply regrets having any involvement with him,” Pillersdorf said.
The fees from Black help explain a mystery about Epstein’s wealth: how a man who left behind an estate worth more than $600 million made money in the years after his most lucrative client, billionaire retail magnate Leslie Wexner, cut him off.
Some of the payments from Black are described in an internal report by Deutsche Bank, Epstein’s primary banker from 2013 into 2019. The report was provided to regulators who fined the German bank over the summer for its failure to catch numerous red flags in Epstein’s financial activities.
Portions of the report reviewed by The New York Times describe a payment of $22.5million in 2017 by a company called BV70 LLC, which the bank said owned Black’s yacht, to Plan D, the company that managed Epstein’ s Gulf stream jet.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to a state prostitution charge with a minor and served 13 months in a state jail as part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors — an arrangement that was kept confidential at the time. After an investigation by The Miami Herald drew attention to his plea deal, federal prosecutors in New York charged Epstein with sex trafficking in July 2019. His death the next month in a Manhattan jail cell was ruled a suicide.
Black knew Epstein for decades — in 1997 he made Epstein one of the original trustees of what is today called the Debra and Leon Black Foundation — and was amongthe high-profile figures who maintained ties with him following his prostitution arrest.