The Money - Ghislaine Maxwell Trial Day 7
“The same day, he transferred $18.3 million worth of funds to another account owned by Maxwell.”
Just as Kate left the stand yesterday, Ghislaine Maxwell seemed especially amused, smiling and nodding as she whispered something to her attorney Bobbi Sternheim.
After Kate’s testimony ended, around 2:10 PM yesterday on Monday, December 6th, the government brought Patrick McHugh to the stand.
McHugh, who worked for J.P. Morgan for 30 years, is currently the Executive Director of its Client Service Group. He called himself an “officer of the firm,” and described himself as the “global business processing control manager” for the company.
The prosecution showed a series of documents to McHugh and had him walk the jurors through just how intertwined Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein’s financial affairs were.
On August 11th, 1999, the court heard, Epstein created a company called the Financial Trust Company, Inc. Epstein listed himself as president.
This company functioned as the “the new Jeffrey Epstein” after “he lobbied for, and received lucrative tax breaks to set up his firm in the U.S. Virgin Islands,” according to Thomas Volscho, a sociology professor at the College of Staten Island working on a book with a criminology perspective on Epstein’s financial empire.
“At this point in the late 1990s,” says Volscho, “his eponymous J. Epstein and Company, Inc. was closed and replaced by Financial Trust Company, Inc. He still maintained a NY office and called it the New York Strategy Group.”
That New York Strategy Group, with an address listed on the 4th floor of 457 Madison Avenue, was linked to an account under Ghislaine Maxwell’s name in financial records the prosecution presented to the jury. They showed that on June 15th, 2007, Jeffrey Epstein sent Maxwell $7.4 million dollars.
Three days later on June 18th, Maxwell transferred that money to an account under the name of Air Ghislaine Inc.
Jeffrey Epstein’s private pilot Larry Visoski, who testified last week about ferrying around powerful men like Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Itzhak Perlman, was an employee of Air Ghislaine Inc.
When Visoki gave political contributions to Hillary Clinton, he listed his employer as Air Ghislaine.
The same day Maxwell transferred the money to Air Ghislaine Inc., the company transferred the funds to Stratford, Connecticut based Sikorsky Aircraft Corp to purchase a green Sikorsky S-76C helicopter.
Two months after setting up Financial Trust Company, Inc, on October 19th, Epstein sold $18.3 million worth of JP Morgan Money Market Funds through the company. The same day, he transferred $18.3 million worth of funds to another account owned by Maxwell.
And in 2012, Jeffrey Epstein sold another $5 million worth of JP Morgan Tax Free Money Market shares, then transferred the same amount in cash to a bank controlled by Ghislaine Maxwell at the Palm Beach National Bank & Trust Company.
Signature Move
The defense’s cross examination essentially tried to show that the accounts presented by the government as being controlled by Maxwell were, in fact controlled by a signatory officer, Harry Beller. They did this by asking McHugh to compare the signatures on a signature card associated with one of Maxwell’s accounts, and the signatures that appeared on Maxwell’s checks. On those checks, Beller’s signature does appear, proving, argues the defense, that Maxwell had no oversight over dealings involving her bank accounts.
They adduced checks ranging from bills of $7.00 to a dentist, to $40,000 to cover Ghislaine Maxwell’s federal tax duties.