Ex-Apollo CEO Leon Black says Jeffrey Epstein duped him
Leon Black, then-CEO of Apollo Global Management, at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, on May 1, 2018.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Former Apollo Global Management Notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein cheated out more than $60 million in financial management fees by falsely claiming they were tax deductible, CEO Leon Black said in testimony prepared for a House committee Friday.
Black also said in a prepared opening statement shared with CNBC that he was misled by Epstein’s Jekyll-and-Hyde persona.
Black will be interviewed later Friday morning by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is investigating Epstein’s ties to many wealthy and influential people.
“I came here today voluntarily to clarify my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and specifically why I paid him the money I gave him,” Black said in a prepared statement.
“Let me be clear, I have never harassed any women,” Black says.
“I have never been with an underage woman. I have never been involved in sex trafficking. I have never paid Epstein for access to women,” he says. “I was never blackmailed by Epstein. I was not involved in, and had no knowledge of, Epstein’s disgusting behavior.”
“I knew Jekyll. I didn’t know Hyde,” Black says.
Her testimony builds on 2021 findings in the so-called Dechert report, named for the law firm hired to examine how much she paid Epstein for financial advice, the work Epstein did and whether she knew about Epstein’s behavior before his arrest on federal child sex trafficking charges in 2019.
“The Dechert report concluded that I paid $158 million to Epstein,” Black says, according to prepared statements.
“And Dechert reviewed the services Epstein provided and determined that Epstein provided extremely valuable and legitimate tax and estate planning services for my family office; that his tax work was responsible for billions of dollars in savings; and that all of Epstein’s work was reviewed by reputable law and accounting firms.”
Black said Epstein told her that the fees he paid “were tax-deductible, ’60 cents on the dollar,’ and it wasn’t until years later that I learned that wasn’t true.”
“So what I believed to be $95 million of his net compensation over five years was actually $158 million,” Black says. “But at the time, Epstein led me to believe that I was paying ’60 cents on the dollar.’ This assurance was false.”
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