Billionaire artwork collector and Museum of Fashionable Artwork (MoMA) trustee Leon Black is being investigated by the US Senate Finance Committee over his monetary ties to Jeffrey Epstein and a few $158m in funds Black allegedly made to the late intercourse offender, a few of which can have been in reference to Black’s $1bn artwork assortment. The committee has given Black till 1 September to reply questions on his monetary ties to Epstein, however it’s unclear what’s going to occur ought to Black refuse to conform.
A letter despatched to Black in July by the committee’s chairman, Senator Ron Wyden, particulars how Black has purportedly been offering the committee with “insufficient responses” that Wyden claims “solely increase extra questions than solutions” and fail to deal with various tax points that the senator says his employees have uncovered over the course of the investigation, which started in June 2022.
The committee is looking for extra details about transfers from Black to Epstein in trade for “tax and property planning issues”. Within the letter, Wyden notes that the committee questions whether or not the funds Epstein acquired ought to have been labeled as a present for federal tax functions, and whether or not billions of {dollars} of Black’s property are being improperly shielded from his taxable property. The committee is especially serious about Epstein’s function in structuring trusts and different transactions designed to keep away from taxes on as a lot as $2bn that Black transferred to his youngsters, Wyden writes. The probe is an element of a bigger investigation into how “ultra-high web price individuals keep away from or evade paying federal taxes, together with present and property taxes”.
The letter claims that in August 2022, Black’s attorneys indicated that, together with tax and property planning, Epstein had offered Black with “substantial recommendation” about his non-public artwork assortment, which Wyden writes was confirmed by Black’s attorneys to be price greater than $1bn. The committee was informed that Epstein had helped Black type a “new artwork partnership” and aided with the sale of objects from Black’s assortment. When the committee submitted a set of questions digging into the small print on the connection between Epstein and Black’s private artwork assortment, Black refused to reply, Wyden writes.
Within the July letter, Wyden offers Black a deadline of 1 September to reply greater than a dozen questions on his enterprise preparations with Epstein. A number of of those straight concern Black’s artwork assortment, together with enquiries into the artwork partnership shaped with Epstein’s assist, any artwork loans that concerned Epstein and Epstein’s function in transactions involving work exceeding $1m in worth.
Black’s representatives mentioned in a press release that Black has “cooperated extensively” with the Senate Finance Committee and that every one transactions referenced in Wyden’s letter have been authorized. “Mr. Black has absolutely paid all taxes owed to the federal government,” they mentioned.
Black has come underneath fireplace for his relationship with Epstein because the disgraced financier was discovered useless by suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019 whereas awaiting trial on sex-trafficking prices. In March 2021, Black stepped down as Apollo World Administration’s chief govt and chairperson after an impartial investigation discovered that he had paid greater than $150m to Epstein between 2012 and 2017, nicely after Epstein pleaded responsible (in 2008) to soliciting prostitution from a teenage woman in Florida.
As MoMA board chair, Black didn’t search re-election after greater than 150 artists signed a 2021 open letter demanding that he be faraway from his submit; he stays a trustee of the museum. Simply days earlier than Wyden despatched the Senate Finance Committee letter, it was revealed that Black would pay $62.5m as a part of a settlement with the US Virgin Islands to protect him from authorized claims associated to Epstein’s sex-trafficking operations within the archipelago. Black is at present dealing with sexual-assault allegations in three lawsuits, two from girls who declare he raped them at Epstein’s Higher East Facet mansion. Black has denied the allegations.
