Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay $75 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed in Manhattan by one of the victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Deutsche Bank is accused of having "provid[ed] the requisite financial support for the continued operation" of the financier's sex trafficking of girls and young women while he was a client at the bank from 2013 to 2018.
"Deutsche Bank also knew that Epstein would use means of force, threats of force, fraud, abuse of legal process, exploitation of power disparity, and a variety of other forms of coercion to cause young women and girls to engage in commercial sex acts," the suit alleges.
It added: "Knowing that they would earn millions of dollars from facilitating Epstein’s sex trafficking, and from its relationship with Epstein, Deutsche Bank chose profit over following the law. Specifically, Deutsche Bank chose facilitating a sex trafficking operation in order to churn profits."
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Deutsche Bank has not commented on the settlement. However, after paying $150 million to settle a case brought against it by the New York Department of Financial Services in connection with its work for Epstein in July 2020, the Bank stated: "We acknowledge our error of onboarding Epstein in 2013 and the weaknesses in our processes, and have learnt from our mistakes and shortcomings."
JPMorgan, another major bank, is also currently facing a class action lawsuit brought against it by Epstein's victims in Manhattan. Epstein was a JPMorgan client from 1998 to 2013. He died in police custody in 2019, in what New York City's medical examiner deemed a suicide.
