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Bank of America agreed to pay $72.5 million to settle a civil lawsuit filed by women who accused the bank of facilitating their sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein.
The legal teams for the bank and the alleged victims had told Manhattan-based US District Judge Jed Rakoff that they had reached a "settlement in principle".
A rep for Bank of America noted, "While we stand by our prior statements made in the filings in this case, including that Bank of America did not facilitate sex trafficking crimes, this resolution allows us to put this matter behind us and provides further closure for the plaintiffs."
In a joint court filing, David Boies and Bradley Edwards, attorneys for the plaintiffs, said the settlement represented the best option for their clients "given that many Class Members suffered harm many years ago and are in need of financial relief now".
Rakoff would have to approve the settlement. The judge scheduled a court hearing for Thursday to consider the decision.
Filed in October by a woman using the pseudonym Jane Doe, who accused the second-largest US bank of ignoring suspicious financial transactions related to Epstein despite a "plethora" of information about his crimes because it valued profit over protecting victims.
The Bank of America's settlement is lower than the $290 million that JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay Epstein victims in 2023.
While the case against JPMorgan focused on the bank's client relationship with Epstein, the one against Bank of America mainly alleged that it was used by "his co-conspirators, associates and victims".
The settlement money is to be paid to all women who were sexually abused or trafficked by Epstein or his associates between June 30, 2008, and July 6, 2019.
Moreover, according to the suit, Apollo Global Management Inc. co-founder Leon Black used Bank of America accounts to transfer $170 million to Epstein.
Lawyers for the victims alleged those transfers were "the primary means by which the sex-trafficking venture was funded and for which there was no apparent business or lawful purpose".
Black has consistently denied wrongdoing and was not named as a defendant in the case.
For the unversed, Jeffrey Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.
