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Billionaire Leon Black gave more money to Jeffrey Epstein than known, Senate committee says.
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According to the US Senate Finance Committee, he transferred $170 million to Epstein’s accounts.
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Black has said he paid the accused sex trafficker for tax advice. Sen. Ron Wyden is skeptical.
Billionaire Leon Black was more responsible for Jeffrey Epstein’s vast fortune than previously known, according to a Senate committee investigation.
Black, the billionaire financier and former CEO of Apollo Global Management, transferred $170 million to the Epstien’s coffers over the course of five years, US Sen. Ron Wyden said in a letter to the US Justice and Treasury departments this week — not $158 million, as previously reported.
An investigation commissioned by Apollo’s board appears to have missed $12 million in transfers, which were discovered by investigators working on the US Senate Finance Committee.
The Apollo investigation, conducted by the law firm Dechert LLP, led to Black’s resignation in 2021 from the investment firm he cofounded.
It also wasn’t clear why the bank handling the $170 million in transfers didn’t raise any flags until months after Epstein’s arrest on sex trafficking charges in 2019, Wyden wrote.
“The Bank did not make filings related to the Black and Epstein transactions until seven years after the transactions began in 2013,” Wyden wrote. “In fact, the Bank first reported the payments from Black to Epstein more than eight months after Epstein was arrested on charges of sex trafficking involving underage girls.”
Wyden, a Democratic lawmaker representing Oregon, asked US Attorney General Pamela Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to hand over documents related to the transfers by March 27, including from the trove of “Epstein documents” that Bondi promised to make public.
Black’s relationship with Epstein came under scrutiny amid the accused sex trafficker’s 2019 arrest and jail suicide. Epstein left an estate worth around $630 million around the time of his death, some of which has since been paid to compensate his victims.
According to the investigation commissioned by Apollo, Black paid Epstein for financial advice, including strategies that saved him around $600 million in estate and family trust tax payments. Epstein also helped manage issues related to Black’s vast artwork collection, his yacht, and private jet, according to the Dechert report. The report also said Epstein and Black had a falling out in 2016 when Epstein believed he deserved more money.
