Deutsche Bank will pay $75 million to settle Jeffrey Epstein lawsuit

Deutsche Bank will pay $75 million to settle the litigation that that alleged it profited financially from aiding Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking network.

The settlement relates to an anonymous defendant who filed a proposed class-action lawsuit in November 2022, saying that Deutsche Bank did business with Epstein while being aware that he utilised money in the account to finance sex-trafficking activity. The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, said Deutsche Bank did not admit wrongdoing.

According to the initial lawsuit, which was submitted in US court in New York, Deutsche Bank gained financially by aiding Epstein's 'sex trafficking organisation to successfully rape, sexually assault and coercively sex traffic Plaintiff Jane Doe 1 and the numerous other members of the Class.'

After JPMorgan Chase froze his accounts in 2013, American financier Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting a sex crimes trial, started banking with Deutsche Bank.

An unidentified woman -- apparently the same as in the Deutsche case -- and the US Virgin Islands brought separate suits against JPMorgan late last year, accusing the bank of facilitating Epstein's crimes by ignoring warnings and continuing to keep him as a client until 2013.

The bank has refuted the claims and taken legal action of its own against a former official who had connections to Epstein.

In July 2020, Deutsche Bank consented to pay $150 million to resolve claims made by the New York Department of Financial Services regarding compliance lapses related to the bank's work for Epstein

"We acknowledge our error of onboarding Epstein in 2013 and the weaknesses in our processes, and have learnt from our mistakes and shortcomings," Deutsche Bank said in July 2020.

Epstein was convicted in Florida in 2008 of paying young girls for massages, but served just 13 months in jail under a secret plea deal.

Later facing charges of trafficking underage girls for sex, he killed himself in a New York jail in August 2019.