Jeffrey Epstein held a retail current account and a savings account at BNP Paribas from 2008 until mid-2018, according to documents released by the U.S. Justice Department and reported by Le Monde. 

Epstein maintained relatively small balances in his accounts at the French bank, ranging from about $50,000 to just over $200,000 depending on the year, the newspaper said. 

He initially opened the account at Fortis France in 2008, and BNP Paribas inherited it later that year through its acquisition of Fortis. 

BNP Paribas told Le Monde that the account was opened “in February 2008… at a non-suspicious time” and said it was ultimately closed at the bank’s initiative “for compliance reasons.” The bank said it had no connection to the Epstein case and characterized the relationship as a retail account rather than private banking.

But the relationship raises uncomfortable questions for BNP Paribas, in large part because publicly available information on the financier should have raised multiple red flags well before 2018. 

Epstein had been convicted in 2008 of procuring a minor for prostitution and was thereafter registered as a sex offender, Le Monde noted. Epstein also faced public allegations and civil lawsuits in the United States during the early 2010s, including accusations from his sex-trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre in 2011.

Questions surround the source of Epstein’s wealth and his use of offshore structures and Caribbean tax havens, particularly the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he conducted much of his business through shell companies and trusts and registered aircraft and yachts, Le Monde said. 

The now-deceased financier was separately cited in the 2017 “Paradise Papers” investigation, which reported that he chaired an offshore entity in Bermuda holding complex financial products.

BNP Paribas declined to specify whether it filed any suspicious transaction reports with France’s financial-crime intelligence unit Tracfin after the account was closed in 2018, the newspaper said. 

The bank accounts were used to buy a Mercedes S-Class, Hermès purchases, and payments such as utility and internet bills. Epstein received a €75,000 transfer into BNP Paribas from Deutsche Bank Private Bank in the United States in October 2013, and another transfer was made in July 2018 from Paris to Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas in New York, according to the report. 

The Paris account also shows art purchases in Paris destined for export, mainly to Miami and the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned Little Saint James, Le Monde said. 

Read more at Le Monde