CHARLOTTE AMALIE — The probate battle over sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s vast, Virgin Islands-based empire ratcheted up Tuesday with a new complaint from Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George, and an emergency motion from the estate’s attorneys to vacate liens George had placed on the more than $600 million in cash and properties Epstein left after his August suicide.
George has filed an amended complaint against what her office has dubbed the “Epstein Enterprise,” a network of businesses and individuals accused of helping Epstein conceal his criminal activities, as first reported in the V.I. Daily News. The complaint was just one of a raft of documents filed Tuesday in both the Superior Court civil case, as well as the probate court proceeding that will determine the fate of the estate.
The amended complaint names new defendants, including Epstein’s longtime attorneys and co-executors of the estate, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn.
The filing also adds Epstein’s Virgin Islands-based Southern Trust Company, Inc. as a named defendant, “with new allegations and a count related to Southern Trust Company’s conduct in fraudulently obtaining benefits from the government of the Virgin Islands.”
Much of Epstein’s wealth was held in shell corporations and other businesses located in the Virgin Islands, including American Yacht Harbor and Southern Trust Co. Both companies continue to receive tax breaks from the Economic Development Authority, whose current chairman, Kevin Rodriguez, also serves as the governor’s deputy chief of staff.
Former first lady Cecile de Jongh has served as office manager at Epstein’s Southern Trust Company for 20 years. Gov. Albert Bryan Jr., who was serving as chairman of the Economic Development Commission at the time under former Gov. John de Jongh Jr., signed off on the most recent certificate for Southern Trust in 2014, granting Epstein a 90% exemption from V.I. income taxes and a 100% exemption from gross receipts and excise taxes.
The amended complaint charges that “The Epstein Enterprise misrepresented the purpose, activities, employment, and income of the Southern Trust Company, Inc., in order to obtain and maintain valuable tax incentives in order to fund the criminal activities of the Epstein Enterprise,” and “used Southern Trust Company to employ, pay and conceal the activities of participants in the criminal activities of the Enterprise.”
Epstein and his associates presented false information to the EDC, George wrote, and Southern Trust Company “failed to disclose it did not and could not carry out its stated purpose of providing consulting services in financial and biomedical informatics.”
Epstein’s associates received material benefit from their participation in the enterprise, “which has engaged in human trafficking, forced labor, sexual servitude and commercial sexual activity of underage girls and young women in knowing and reckless disregard of the laws of the Virgin Islands,” according to the complaint.
The complaint includes liens on the entirety of Epstein’s estate, including Great and Little St. James islands, and George is also seeking forfeiture of an unspecified amount.
Attorneys for Epstein’s victims and his estate both said at a probate court hearing held Feb. 4 on St. Thomas that the liens are preventing the establishment of a victims’ compensation fund, and Magistrate Judge Carolyn Hermon-Percell ordered both parties to file briefs on the matter by Tuesday. George distributed her most recent filings to the media Tuesday evening, along with a statement about her ongoing objections to the victims’ compensation fund as proposed, and a letter to Virgin Islands attorney Christopher Kroblin, one of the lawyers representing Epstein’s estate.
“I expect and certainly understand why some victims will want an expedited process that provides compensation — however incomplete — for the harm done to them. However, to be credible and to comport with the law and policies of the Virgin Islands, that process must also be fair, just and independent. The fund, as proposed by the estate, does not meet those standards,” George wrote in the letter to Kroblin.
She listed issues with how the fund would be administered and made 15 suggestions for revisions, including a cap on expenses “to avoid the excessive costs proposed to run the fund, which would deplete the funds in the estate and place significant resources from the fund in the pockets of the estate’s associates and hand-picked administrators and attorneys,” and an agreement that the estate would waive all non-disclosure agreements signed by former Epstein employees and encourage them “to cooperate fully and truthfully with the attorney general and her representatives.” Kroblin, meanwhile, filed an emergency motion asking a judge to vacate the liens so the estate can pay expenses.
While Assistant Attorney General Ariel Smith said at the hearing on Feb. 4 that the parties would discuss the matter of estate upkeep and likely agree to release at least some funding so payments could be made, “there is only one estate account; the attorney general has now frozen it,” Kroblin wrote in the motion.
“Violating her counsel’s express representations to the court only last week, the attorney general of the Virgin Islands has now brought the administration of the estate to a screeching and potentially disastrous halt,” Kroblin wrote.
“No bills will be paid, no employees compensated, no properties maintained, no civil litigation defended, no regular administrative duties fulfilled, all because the attorney general refuses to do what the court clearly directed her to do: allow the co-executors to continue the administration of the estate.”
By SUZANNE CARLSON/The Virgin Islands Daily News