A mysterious bank Jeffrey Epstein opened in the Virgin Islands in 2014 — which has been seemingly stagnant for years — suddenly received millions of dollars from his estate after his death, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
The fallen billionaire and accused sex trafficker applied to open one of the territories’ first international banking operations, Southern Country International, so he could chase the “dynamic discipline of international banking,” according to an application for the institution, obtained by the outlet.
The application, where Epstein describes himself as one of the investment world’s “pioneers,” was ultimately approved in 2014 and allowed him to do business with offshore clients only, the outlet said.
While the bank renewed its license five times since then, it’s unclear if it had any clients or actually conducted any business, until it received a windfall of cash from Epstein’s estate after he died, the outlet reported.
The bank had $693,157 in assets when Epstein died back in August and then, four months later in December, the estate transferred $15.5 million to the bank in two separate checks. Southern Country then sent back $2.6 million, leaving the total deposit at $12.9 million, the outlet said, citing records filed by the estate last week.
By the end of the year, the millions were gone and the total assets at the bank were just below half a million dollars, the outlet said.
During a court hearing Tuesday in the Virgin Islands on the estate, Judge Carolyn Hermon-Purcell, who’s overseeing Epstein’s $653 million in remaining assets, questioned the lawyers on the cash transfer, saying the “disclosure was not satisfactory,” the outlet reported.
The estate responded by saying some of the payment was made in error, but the response wasn’t sufficient for Hermon-Purcell, who asked the estate to provide a full accounting of what happened.
The executors for Epstein’s estate did not return a request for comment.