Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase have filed a motion to dismiss lawsuits in the US over their dealings with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

They neither participated in nor profited from their former client's sex trafficking, the two banks said in papers filed Friday night in Manhattan federal court. A group of unnamed women had filed lawsuits against the banks at the end of November. They accuse them of having profited financially from the deceased hedge fund manager, who was accused of sexually exploiting young people.

JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank argued that the women had not been able to show that the institutions had violated laws against human trafficking. They were not responsible for the abuse by Epstein and were not obliged to protect the women from Epstein. A lawyer for the women explained that the lawsuit filed on November 24 speaks for itself. It is disappointing that the banks continue to refuse to take responsibility in this context.

Epstein had pleaded guilty in 2008 to forcing a minor into prostitution. He received an 18-month prison sentence for this. After being arrested again on sex trafficking charges, he took his own life in custody in August 2019 at the age of 66.

Epstein was a client of JPMorgan from around 2000 to 2013 and of Deutsche Bank from 2013 to 2018. "It was a serious mistake that we took him on as a client in 2013 - it should never have happened," wrote Group CEO Christian Sewing to employees in 2020. In July 2020, the bank was fined 150 million dollars by the New York banking regulator for misconduct in its relationship with Epstein, among other things.

(Report by Jonathan Stempel, written by Kerstin Dörr. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets)