Attorney General Sees Too Much Secrecy in Epstein Estate
Some of the same furtive techniques that Jeffrey Epstein employed in life are showing up in the litigation over dividing up the wealth he left behind when he died.
There are mysterious companies, lingering nondisclosure agreements and contractual clauses that some lawyers fear could protect anyone who took part in Epstein’s wrongdoing.
The estate’s lawyers say they have a plan to fairly distribute money to dozens of women who have accused Epstein of sexually abusing them as teenagers. But the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein built a complex web of corporate entities, says Epstein’s money is still buying silence.
And in the middle is a fortune estimated at well over a half-billion dollars.
“We have a lot of concerns with respect to the transparency of the estate and its finances and the accounting of the estate,” the attorney general, Denise N. George, said in an interview last month.
George filed a civil forfeiture lawsuit against the estate in January, roughly five months after Epstein killed himself while being held in federal custody in Manhattan after his arrest on sex trafficking charges. She said she sued to protect the interests of Epstein’s accusers and recoup some of the money that Epstein made during his two decades in the Virgin Islands.
The estate has insisted it is acting in the best interest of Epstein’s accusers. But it has also provided an incomplete accounting of his finances, according to records reviewed by The New York Times.
At least one business — IGO Company LLC, a corporate entity established by Epstein in December 2006 — was left out of the estate’s court filings. The company, which lists Epstein as its sole owner, was still active and in good standing as of Monday, according to a U.S. Virgin Islands government site.
Lawyers for the estate did not respond to a request for comment. The coexecutors of the estate are Darren Indyke, a lawyer, and Richard Kahn, an accountant. Both men worked closely with Epstein for many years and were listed as officers for some of his businesses.
Much of the fighting between the estate and George’s office involves a plan to establish a victims’ compensation fund, which would allow accusers to receive payments from the estate without a potentially costly court case. The estate’s representatives say the proposed fund — which would be set up with the help of the specialist who ran the compensation program for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — would allow accusers to receive money quickly and privately.
But George said the estate wanted to attach too many strings to those payments.
On April 7, George’s office told the probate court handling Epstein’s will that she and the estate had reached an impasse over the estate’s demand that victims who take part in the fund agree to a broad release that would bar them from suing any party “whether they participated negligently or intentionally in wrongdoing themselves.”
To George, the estate’s conduct was a reminder of the legal maneuvers that surrounded Epstein’s guilty plea 12 years ago to soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida. In 2007, federal prosecutors agreed to a wide-ranging nonprosecution agreement that covered Epstein’s named and unnamed co-conspirators. (A federal appeals court this month rejected a legal challenge brought by one of his victims to the agreement.)
George’s office said the estate now wanted to “secure similarly broad protection for Epstein’s compatriots-in-crime from their victims.”
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