Epstein Scandal: JPMorgan Outlines Alleged Roles of Major Political Players in USVI

In a heavily-redacted filing entered on Tuesday, lawyers for JP Morgan have placed on record their opposition to the U.S. Virgin Islands’ attempt to have the court toss out some of the bank’s defenses in the lawsuit against it.

The latest salvo in the civil battle between the Government of the Virgin Islands and the largest commercial bank in the United States holds that the evidence objected to by GVI lawyers are valid and should not be rejected by the court.

JP Morgan Chase alleges that GVI’s motivation in seeking to have these defenses excluded from the case is nothing more than a cynical ploy to avoid the government's own culpability in facilitating the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein. The territory’s suit claims that JP Morgan, for whom the convicted sex offender was a lucrative client for years, did nothing in the face of what should have been strong suspicion of his criminal activities.

However, the bank’s argument since the suit was filed has been, in part, that the largest facilitator of Epstein’s sex trafficking enterprise, headquartered on the island of Little St. James in the USVI, was the Government of the Virgin Islands itself.

Through 30 pages of a document, of which some pages are almost completely obscured by the heavy black rectangles of redaction, JP Morgan’s lawyers argue that their counterparts on the opposite side, by claiming that these defenses would in part require an additional onerous burden when it comes to discovery, are merely trying to hide the Virgin Islands' complicit behavior in granting Epstein the ability to live a comfortable, low-profile life in the territory.

JP Morgan claims that Epstein established ties with the local political class that extended all the way to Government House. Cecile Galiber de Jongh, the wife of former Governor John de Jongh Jr. managed Epstein’s local companies even while occupying her position as First Lady, the bank alleges.