- Billionaire Leon Black gave more money to Jeffrey Epstein than known, Senate committee says.
- According to the US Senate Finance Committee, he transferred $170 million to Epstein’s accounts.
- 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.
In his letter, Wyden expressed skepticism that the advice from Epstein — who dropped out from college — would be worth anything close to $170 million Black paid over five years.
“For his services Epstein was paid amounts that far exceeded what Black paid other professional advisors involved in his tax and estate planning, which includes some of the most high-priced legal counsel in the nation,” Wyden wrote. “At an annualized rate of $23 to $26 million per year, Epstein’s compensation was higher than the median CEO pay for Fortune 500 companies.”
One of Epstein’s accounts that received money from Black, Financial Trust Company Inc., was previously used for Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation, according to evidence filed in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial.
Bank records made public in the trial of Maxwell — who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for trafficking girls to Epstein for sex — show that Epstein used the business to pay Maxwell. He transferred $30.7 million to Maxwell in the years they were together. Over $7 million of those funds were spent on a helicopter that accusers said Maxwell used to ferry girls to Epstein’s private residence in the US Virgin Islands.
In 2023, Black later paid $62.5 million to settle claims from the US Virgin Islands Attorney General’s office related to “how Jeffrey Epstein used the money Black paid him to partially fund his operations in the US Virgin Islands,” according to a copy of the settlement Wyden made public.
Representatives for Black, Apollo Global Management, and Dechert LLP didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Wyden’s scrutiny of Black could complicate the Senate confirmation process of the Trump administration’s nominees.
President Donald Trump, who was friends with Epstein, selected Black’s son, Benjamin Black, to lead the US International Development Finance Corp, also known as the DFC.
According to Reuters, Trump has considered converting the DFC into a sovereign wealth fund, which he said could buy TikTok.
The younger Black has also proposed repurposing funds from USAID, which was gutted by Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative, to fund the DFC. Under Black’s plan, the DFC would invest in developing nations to advance foreign policy goals rather than spend the money on aid.
