A civil suit filed in federal court last week accused Jeffrey Epstein’s “longest banking partner,” FirstBank Puerto Rico, of “participating in and financially benefiting from” the sex offender and disgraced financier’s international trafficking operation for more than two decades.
“As a result of FirstBank’s close multi-decade relationship with Epstein, FirstBank acquired a plethora of information regarding Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, information that could have put Epstein in prison years earlier if FirstBank had simply properly reported what it knew to authorities. Instead, it chose to profit to the detriment of hundreds of victims,” according to the complaint, which was filed last week in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of a woman identified as Jane Doe. The anonymous plaintiff is represented by attorney David Boies, who has represented several survivors of Epstein’s abuse.
FirstBank’s parent company, First BanCorp, issued a statement Friday denying the accusations.
“The Corporation is reviewing the complaint and will respond through the appropriate legal channels,” according to the statement. “Given that litigation is pending, FirstBank will not be providing further comment at this time.”
The 91-page complaint alleges that FirstBank worked with Epstein from at least 1998 through 2020 and that it “knowingly provided” him with “the financial support and the veneer of institutional legitimacy.” One U.S. Treasury Department referenced in the complaint noted that from 2003-2019, there were more than 4,725 wire transfers — totaling $1.08 billion — involving Epstein and associates, including his attorney, Darren Indyke, accountants Harry Beller and Richard Kahn, and U.S. Virgin Islands tax attorney Erika Kellerhals.
Epstein used Kellerhals, according to the complaint, to organize shell entities, act as a trustee “for trusts that directly paid Epstein’s victims,” and to manage real estate transfers and transactions related to his private islands. Kellerhals also introduced Epstein during a V.I. Economic Development Commission hearing in 2012, during which he pitched a bizarre “biomedical and financial informatics” business to commissioners including current Economic Development Authority board member Jose Penn, the V.I. Public Finance Authority’s current director of finance administration, Nathan Simmonds, and the territory’s current governor, Albert Bryan Jr.
The complaint dedicates several paragraphs to the “U.S. Virgin Islands Context” of Epstein’s sex-trafficking activity. Epstein purchased Little St. James in 1998 and made the island his primary residence. Referencing the territory’s 2020 lawsuit against Epstein’s estate, which was ultimately settled for $105 million, the complaint argues that the “conduct catalogued in the USVI complaint — Epstein’s use of USVI-based entities to obscure trafficking activity, his payment of recruiters, his maintenance of a private aviation operation that flew victims to and from the islands, and the role of his entities and personnel in supporting that operation — is the same conduct FirstBank facilitated through its USVI and Puerto Rico banking operations.”
The plaintiff is seeking to certify a class of Epstein survivors as well as “punitive and exemplary damages” against FirstBank.
