Leon Black, founding father of private-equity big Apollo Global Management, agreed to pay $62.5 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands earlier this yr to be free from any potential claims arising from the territory’s three-year investigation into the intercourse trafficking crimes of the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, in line with a Friday report.
The beforehand undisclosed settlement detailed Friday by the New York Times, which noticed a duplicate of the settlement, got here after the Virgin Islands reached a $105 million deal in November with Epstein’s property. The subsequent month, the territory sued JPMorgan Chase & Co.
JPM,
in federal court docket over its 15-year relationship with Epstein, a registered intercourse offender who died by suicide whereas held in jail in 2019. The JPMorgan motion was settled earlier this month.
Black stepped away from Apollo CEO duties in 2021 amid battle with companions over the Epstein revelations. And he has proven his willingness to pay as much as keep away from future deeper scrutiny of his decades-long social and enterprise hyperlinks to Epstein, a relationship that the private-equity pillar has mentioned he regrets. Among different dealings, it’s been revealed that Black paid $158 million to Epstein for tax and property planning providers.
On a late-2020 convention name about Apollo
APO,
outcomes, Black maintained that his enterprise relationship with Epstein didn’t instantly contain the agency.
Black mentioned he first turned conscious of Epstein’s felony conduct when it was reported the latter was investigated by Florida and federal prosecutors. Authorities had first probed Epstein allegations in 2005. Black’s funds to Epstein continued after the latter’s 2008 responsible plea in Florida to a prostitution cost involving a teenage woman.
Black mentioned on the 2020 name with traders that he regretted giving Epstein a second likelihood.
“This was a terrible mistake. I wish I could go back in time and change that decision, but I cannot,” he mentioned on the time. “Had I known any of the facts about Epstein’s sickening and repulsive conduct, which I learned in late 2018, more than a year after I stopped working with them, I never would have had anything to do with him.”
Source web site: www.marketwatch.com
