WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday unveiled an ongoing investigation into billionaire private equity billionaire Leon Black’s financial ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, and said the investigation “uncovered serious tax issues.”
“The investigation uncovered serious tax issues and other concerns about trusts and foundations that Black executed to avoid more than $1 billion in gift and estate taxes,” the panel said in a statement Tuesday, adding that its investigation began in June 2022.
The Senate panel said the $158 million in payments in multiple installments from 2012 to 2017 by Black to Epstein for financial advice appeared “unreasonably large,” because Epstein was “neither a licensed tax attorney nor a certified public accountant.”
The panel also alleged that Black “refused to answer questions or provide any documents that would show how Epstein’s compensation for tax services and estate planning was completed or justified.”
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Black’s spokeswoman said the billionaire was “cooperating fully” with the panel’s investigation and provided more details.
“The transactions described in the Committee’s letter were legal in all respects, were conceived, audited and executed by reputable law and tax firms and other advisors, and Mr. Black has fully paid all taxes owed to the government,” Black’s spokesman said in an emailed statement.
Black had previously admitted to paying Epstein for “legal financial advisory services.” Last week, the New York Times reported that Black paid $62.5 million to the US Virgin Islands to avoid any legal claims tied to the Epstein sex-trafficking investigation.
Black is worth 10.1 billion dollars, according to Forbes magazine. He left Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm he founded, in 2021.
Epstein, a registered sex worker who once counted former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton as friends, killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Copyright 2023 Thomson Reuters.
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