Senate Democrat’s report says major banks ‘looked the other way’ on Epstein

Summary

A new report by a top Democrat in the United States Senate presents evidence that Wall Street banks “looked the other way” when it came to the behaviour of disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein. The report, published on Tuesday, was released by Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. He wrote that the banks’ actions “allowed Epstein to have ready access to the mountains of cash he used to lure, harbor and transport his victims” as part of his alleged sex-trafficking ring. Wyden added that bank records and public court filings reviewed by his team “detail a shocking pattern of the biggest Wall Street banks in the country choosing to ignore clear evidence of sex trafficking and money laundering, just to keep a wealthy client on the books”. Beyond shielding Epstein from federal scrutiny, the report says the banks may also have been in violation of federal anti-money laundering laws that would have required them to report the suspicious behaviour. Wyden also took aim at the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury, insinuating they did not perform their due diligence in their investigation of Epstein. The financier was found dead of an apparent suicide in a New York jail in 2019 as he awaited trial on federal sex trafficking charges. The report comes as both Republican and Democratic critics question why the Epstein investigation has yielded so few US criminal charges, save for those against Epstein and his longtime confidante Ghislaine Maxwell. Wyden called Tuesday’s report “a ready-made roadmap for prosecutors, investigators and members of Congress to finally start holding the Epstein class accountable”. Last November, the Senate and House of Representatives passed a law requiring the Justice Department to release all the files within 30 days.