Epstein Estate Agrees to Pay More Than $105 Million to U.S. Virgin Islands
Nov. 30, 2022, 3:34 p.m. ET
The estate of Jeffrey Epstein has agreed to pay what could amount to more than $105 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands to settle claims that the disgraced financier used the territory for his decades-long sex trafficking operation under the guise of running a financial advisory firm.
The settlement, approved on Wednesday, caps a nearly three-year-old lawsuit brought by the office of Denise N. George, the attorney general for the U.S. Virgin Islands.
After a year of negotiations, Mr. Epstein’s estate agreed to repay in cash more than $80 million in tax benefits that one of his companies had received from the Virgin Islands. The settlement will also permit the government to get about half the proceeds from the estate’s planned sale of Little Saint James, the secluded private island where Mr. Epstein had resided. The sale could fetch around $55 million.
]Ms. George, whose office filed a civil racketeering lawsuit against Mr. Epstein’s estate in January 2020, had argued that the U.S. territory was deceived into granting lucrative tax benefits to Mr. Epstein’s Southern Trust Company. That enabled Mr. Epstein to use his island residence as a place to sexually abuse young women and finance his lavish lifestyle, Ms. George argued.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/b...e=articleShare
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