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The attorney general for the U.S. Virgin Islands has been unexpectedly dismissed from her position by the territorial governor after she filed a lawsuit against banking giant JP Morgan Chase alleging the financial institution covered up for convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operations.
The Post Millennial noted: “The lawsuit that AG Denise George had filed and launched on Wednesday accused JPMorgan Chase, who banked with Epstein starting in 1998, of ‘knowingly providing and pulling the levers through which recruiters and victims were paid.'” The lawsuit also alleged that the bank turned a “blind eye” to Epstein’s abuse of underage girls and sex trafficking.
“The decision by Governor Albert Bryan to fire the A.G. came just days after Bloomberg News revealed that Ms. George in her capacity as V.I. attorney general had filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase — the largest bank in the United States and the world’s largest bank by market capitalization — without first informing Governor Bryan of such a major action, said a person with knowledge of the matter,” the Virgin Islands Consortium reported.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden arrived in the Virgin Islands, one of the couple’s favorite vacation spots, last week as well.
The outlet added:
JP Morgan as of Thursday had not yet commented on the lawsuit, however reports from a source to the Guardian newspaper are that the disgraced financier’s relationship with the bank ended “long before his ongoing misconduct became known.”
People familiar with the situation said Mr. Bryan had been frustrated with Ms. George for sometime and that her action against the bank was the final straw.
“Carol Thomas-Jacobs, chief deputy attorney general at the V.I. Dept. of Justice has been tapped as acting A.G. following Ms. George’s termination, the Consortium has learned,” the outlet continued.
Epstein, a financier, owned Little St. James in the Virgin Islands, referred to in court documents as “pedophile island.”
“She did not warn Bryan of her intent to file the lawsuit, and the incident was the final straw in the governor’s increasingly frustrated relationship with her, the Virgin Islands Consortium reported, citing a source familiar with the matter,” the UK’s Daily Mail confirmed. But a spokesperson for Bryan said reports that she was fired are “not entirely accurate,” though he declined to elaborate.
“Over more than a decade, JPMorgan (JPM) clearly knew it was not complying with federal regulations in regard to Epstein-related accounts as evidenced by its too-little too-late efforts after Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges and shortly after his death, when JPMorgan (JPM) belatedly complied with federal law,” said the complaint, according to CNN.
“Human trafficking was the principal business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JPMorgan,” the lawsuit states. In addition, the complaint alleges that the bank concealed “wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude” of young girls.
The island’s civil action comes on the heels of lawsuits filed last month by two women against JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank who also accused Epstein of sexual abuse, claiming that the financial institutions benefitted from the late pedophile’s sex trafficking. They accused JPMorgan of having “provided special treatment to the sex-trafficking venture, thereby ensuring its continued operation and sexual abuse and sex-trafficking of young women and girls,” the civil action stated.
“Without the financial institution’s participation, Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme could not have existed,” the lawsuit noted further.
“The time has come for the real enablers to be held responsible, especially his wealthy friends and the financial institutions that played an integral role,” Bradley Edwards, a lawyer in the case against Deutsche Bank, told The Wall Street Journal.
“These victims were wronged, by many, not just Epstein. He did not act alone,” the attorney added.
Epstein was found dead in his New York City jail cell in 2019. A medical examiner ruled that he died by suicide.
In June, Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who was convicted of conspiring with Epstein to recruit, groom, and abuse underage girls, learned her fate in court. U.S. Circuit Judge Alison Nathan has sentenced Maxwell to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking.
“The guideline range applicable is 188 to 235 months imprisonment,” Judge Nathan said.
Maxwell’s behavior was “heinous and predatory,” Nathan says, noting that she worked with Epstein to select “young victims who were vulnerable.”
