Democracy Now

09/09/2025

Amy Goodman:…We’re joined now by David Enrich, deputy investigations editor for The New York Times. He co-wrote the piece headlined “How JPMorgan Enabled the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.”

David, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why don’t you start with that headline: How did JPMorgan enable the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein?

DAVID ENRICH: Well, for many years, JPMorgan was basically the primary bank serving Epstein, and in the course of the 15 years that it worked with him, it did a number of things. And first and foremost, it set up accounts for not only him and his companies, but also quite a few of his victims who had been trafficked into the United States, and it arranged for Epstein to be able to pay those victims, both in the U.S. and in Eastern European countries and in Russia. The bank lent him money that was associated for projects associated with sex trafficking. It, in some cases, just paid him cash, millions of dollars of it, over the years to thank him for some of the services he had provided the bank.

And over and over again, when people within the bank raised red flags about how much cash Epstein was withdrawing and some of the suspicious wire transfers he was doing, people higher up at the bank essentially looked the other way, because they wanted to keep this guy as a lucrative client. And so, basically, Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation, we now know, operated in large part because he had unfettered access to the global financial system. And for many years, it was JPMorgan that was providing him with that access.

AMY GOODMAN: Take us through the timeline. And, David Enrich, what about other banks? Did Jeffrey Epstein try to bank with other banks? I mean, this perhaps the most prestigious, the largest bank in the United States, but wasn’t he turned away by bank after bank?

DAVID ENRICH: Well, there’s some question about who turned him away and when. And certainly, we know that in 2013, after JPMorgan, after years of internal pressure, finally parted ways with him, he went right on to another bank, the German lender Deutsche Bank, which is — you may recall, is the bank that was willing to do business with Donald Trump, among others.

But the history with JPMorgan and Jeffrey Epstein starts in the late 1990s, and Epstein, at the time, was a very wealthy but kind of mysterious guy. The bank itself, in documents that we’ve reviewed, didn’t have a whole lot of information on where his money was coming from, who he was working for or why he was important. All they knew is that he was parking a ton of money at the bank and generating millions of dollars a year in fees.

And over the ensuing years, Epstein’s role inside the bank became more and more important, and it involved not just doing business that made money for the bank, but he introduced the bank to a lot of potential clients, to government leaders, like Benjamin Netanyahu, and advised them on strategic initiatives and provided them kind of with troubleshooting advice along the way. So he was a really indispensable part of the bank and an indispensable partner, I think, to some of the bank’s very highest-ranking executives.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, if you could talk about the significance of this? In fact, it was two Israeli prime ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu —

DAVID ENRICH: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — that he brought to the bank, as well as Ehud Barak.

DAVID ENRICH: Yeah. So, he — and there’s a laundry list of rich, powerful, famous people that Epstein counted among his acquaintances, and he was extremely adept at using those connections to ingratiate himself with lots of other people at institutions. JPMorgan was very eager to do business with him and to accept the introductions he was offering. And the relationship that Epstein had with JPMorgan was really important to Epstein, because it hooked him into the global financial system and provided him with money. But I think, to an equal degree, it also imbued him with legitimacy and credibility that was really important to him, especially after he was, first in 2006, indicted and arrested on sex-trafficking-related charges, and then, in 2008, pleaded guilty and was then incarcerated on similar charges.

And all the while, JPMorgan continued to bank him, and for years afterwards, as well. And that was even though people within the bank, including at a pretty senior level, were aware that — what Epstein had been accused of, what he had pled guilty to, and were concerned that there was a lot more going on here that hadn’t even become public, and yet they decided, institutionally, that the right thing to do was to continue working with him, primarily because he was making them a ton of money.

AMY GOODMAN: He also brought to the bank Sergey Brin — right? — the founder of Google, who banked with them to the tune of something like $4 billion.

DAVID ENRICH: Yeah. And again, there’s a long list of people that he made introductions to. And I think the bank would say that, you know, they are one of the biggest, most prestigious banks in the world, and they don’t have any trouble finding clients and — on their own or talking to government leaders on their own. But there is no dispute that Epstein, at least with one of the very highest-ranking executives of the bank, was someone who the bank was turning to over and over again for advice, for counseling, for introductions and, most of all, for financial services.

And so, this is a long symbiotic relationship, and I think that the fact that this full story hasn’t been told until now is really emblematic, in some ways, of how many mysteries continue to swirl around Jeffrey Epstein and his money, and how much more digging there is to do by everyone, from journalists to congressional investigators, who are, I think, belatedly getting really serious about this.