It appears that lawyers for the late Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, an American financier and a suspected sex trafficker who died in detention last year, found themselves unable to pay the employees at the various properties he owned, as well as the bills for his estate, due to the liens imposed by a local attorney general at the US Virgin Islands, Miami Herald reports.
According to the newspaper, a recently disclosed filing to the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands has revealed that the lawyers asked the judicial authorities to strike down liens or "at minimum allow expenses of estate administration to take priority".
Writing on behalf of the co-executors of Epstein’s estate, Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn, the lawyers explained that the aforementioned criminal-activity liens resulted in “multiple payments for upkeep of the Estate’s properties (including electric bills and pest-control services)” being returned for "insufficient funds", not to mention the inability to "pay the salaries of caretakers for the estate’s residences in Florida, New Mexico and New York" or provide maintenance to aircraft and vehicles.
"The harm caused by the Government’s Lien-imposed freeze on the Estate’s account at FirstBank is no longer theoretical — it is now immediate and real," they argued.
The lawyers also noted that due to said liens, they "can no longer pay for the defense of the twenty-two [22] lawsuits pending against the Estate arising from claims of sexual abuse by Mr. Epstein, including the forfeiture action asserted by the Government as the basis for the imposition of the Liens."
As the newspaper points out, the liens in question were placed by Virgin Islands Prosecutor General Denise George on Epstein’s estate on 31 January as part of a civil enforcement action which she “expanded this month to name Indyke and Kahn as co-conspirators”, with George alleging that “they all together engaged in a criminal conspiracy to facilitate Epstein’s exploitation of minors, and she wants them to be barred from involvement in a proposed victims’ compensation fund”.