JPMorgan Chase is facing intense scrutiny from a top Senate Democrat over its longtime financial ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the Ranking Member on the Senate Finance Committee, issued a report on Wednesday that alleges the financial giant may have underreported more than $1 billion in “suspicious transactions to the federal government” for nearly two decades.
“A compliance failure of this scale is alarming,” Wyden’s report read. “JPMC’s underreporting of SARs impeded law enforcement’s visibility into the financial infrastructure that enabled Epstein’s cross-border sex trafficking organization.”
The report relies on unsealed court documents that show JPMC filed suspicious activity reports (SARs) for $4.3 million in transactions made by Epstein between 2002 and 2016. However, the documents reveal that JPMC waited until after Epstein’s arrest and death in 2019 to fully report on a further $1.3 billion in SARs.
“Emails raise the possibility that this was due to JPMC executives’ desire to continue working with Epstein,” the report read, citing communications in the court documents.
Wyden called for JPMC to “face criminal investigation for the way it enabled Epstein’s horrific crimes,” in a statement on Thursday.
“Complicit banks ought to be investigated, as should anybody who helped Epstein traffic his victims or took part in the abuse,” Wyden said.
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The bank said it regrets working with Epstein.
“The second the government finally made public the sex trafficking details in 2019 — information they clearly had for years — we identified for law enforcement a range of Epstein’s past transactions intended to assist with the investigation,” a spokesperson for JPMC told the New York Times Thursday.
Subpoenas from Congress are also putting pressure on JPMC to reveal its dealings with Epstein. The House Oversight Committee requested Tuesday that the bank divulge certain records on Epstein, include information on more than 4,700 flagged SARs.
“The records sought by this subpoena will assist in the Committee’s oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Jeffrey Epstein,” a subpoena to JPMC read.
