JEFFREY EPSTEIN 🏝 I'M ALIVE

Source: The Think🪖Tank

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Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘hell’ island — and the woman who exposed its secrets

Denise George, the 64-year-old former attorney-general of the US Virgin Islands, is sitting in a hotel room on the main island of St Thomas, looking out at a view of green hills and Caribbean sea. While the photographer takes her picture, she sways to music coming from the swimming pool below. Amid this idyllic scene it is hard to believe that this is the woman who, for the best part of the past four years, has been entrenched in a legal battle with the estate of the financier, paedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

It has been a David v Goliath tussle, during which the banks and billionaires who bankrolled Epstein were hauled into the spotlight — and the rot within the islands that George calls home was laid bare. It was a fight that ultimately cost George her job. But as the corruption and institutional failures that allowed Epstein to abuse women for so long are exposed, she has emerged as one of the few heroes in this sordid story. Now, in her first interview since she was fired on New Year’s Eve, George says she has no regrets. “I’m so glad it’s coming out. This is what it’s all about — it’s about transparency,” she says.

It has been just over four years since Epstein committed suicide in prison in Manhattan while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, and nearly two years since his friend Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite and daughter of the media baron Robert Maxwell, was convicted for her part in the operation that saw him traffic and abuse hundreds of women, many of them teenagers, around the world.

• Jeffrey Epstein list: Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton named as files made public

The story could have ended there, but instead we have entered a second act — one that is playing out in courtrooms in the US Virgin Islands and in New York, where two of America’s biggest banks, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank, have been accused of enabling Epstein’s years of abuse. The latest allegations focus on two men, both titans of Wall Street, who were long-term friends and business associates of Epstein.

In May Jes Staley, a former JP Morgan investment banker — who stood down as chief executive of Barclays bank in 2021 over his links to Epstein — was named in a New York courtroom as the “powerful executive” who had allegedly sexually assaulted one victim. Recently the billionaire investor and art collector Leon Black, who once spent $120 million on a version of Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, has been accused of rape by two women who claim that he attacked them during massages at Epstein’s townhouse in Manhattan. Both men deny the claims.

The foundation for much of this latest stage was laid here, in these little islands where life moves slowly and money talks.

Epstein’s private playground

A college dropout, Epstein became a financier on Wall Street in the late 1970s. His wealth has always been shrouded in secrecy but he bought the island of Little St James from a venture capitalist in 1998, paying a reported $8 million for the 71-acre estate. He renovated the buildings, including a main house and three guest cottages, a helipad and a dock. In 2016 he spent another $22.5 million to buy Great St James, the island next door, apparently in an effort to shield his private playground from prying eyes on the hourly ferry from St Thomas to St John.

It was on these islands that Epstein could entertain the rich and famous — and it was here that he could be at his most depraved. He would fly women and girls over from Florida to St Thomas on his plane, the “Lolita Express”. Then he would bring them on his helicopter to the island he called Little St Jeff, retreating into his private cabana by the pool and raising a flag to show he was in situ. This was his personal paradise; but for the girls who were brought here, many of them teenagers bought and trafficked from eastern Europe, it was hell. They were raped and assaulted; if they tried to escape, he took their passports away.

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Update: on September 26, 2023, JP Morgan reached a settlement with the US Virgin Islands, agreeing to pay the territory $75 million. The bank has also settled with Jes Staley for an undisclosed sum in a confidential agreement. JP Morgan said: “While the settlement does not involve admissions of liability, the firm deeply regrets any association with this man [Epstein], and would never have continued doing business with him if it believed he was using the bank in any way to commit his heinous crimes.”

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