Write Althea and Asclepius, LUDCI.eu Editorial Team
Human trafficking is not an outdated historical predicament. It is still the same problem today as it used to be but with a
modern twist. Forced labour, sex trafficking, and child trafficking occurrences dominate nowadays modern slavery. For the customers in this barbaric market, it is about dark pleasure and profitability at the cost of broken dreams and personalities of their victims. The rings of sellers proliferate on trafficking men, women, and children. Their only motivation is money. This brings to the fore a very important fact that could help end human trafficking – follow where the money goes.
FATF reports the human trafficking is the third most profitable crime in the world. With revenues exceeding $150 billion annually, surely there are people managing the deals, the transactions, the transfers, and the budget forecasting and analysis. Any businessperson will agree that when managing a small firm with a total worth of less than 5 figures, book-keeping is easy, but as the figures grow, then a financial expert would be needed.
In fact, it is imperative to hire financial experts to manage a 6-figure legitimate business. And if you need a financial expert for such figures, the same would be the case for a business corporation as human trafficking. In this case, such advisers would not be just any Jack off the streets-they would have to be experienced enough to know how to hide under the radar of IT security structures and financial laws. Henceforth, it is certain that these crime rings recruit financial experts to manage their activities directly or indirectly.
This is where Wall Street comes in. Wall Street is famed to be home of the savviest financial experts around the world. Several investment firms and private investors are found on their block. In the world of investment and fund management, discretion is vital. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that an investment firm would keep its clients secret and its investment portfolio locked and secured. In one way, this must be done as this is a high-risk, high-volatile market with stiff competition. But for the same reasons, when that level of secrecy is tattered, skeletons come out.
The indictment of Jeffrey Epstein brings this fact to life. The billionaire investor was indicted multiple times between 1998 and 2019 on grounds of sex trafficking. His alleged victims were underage females whom he paid for massages at his mansion. These massages turned into sexual foreplay, usually ending up with girls being unwillingly drugged, molested, battered, and destroyed for life.
It is reported that he also paid his victims to help him spread the word and bring in more underage girls. Forbes 2020 indicates that Epstein’s alleged abuse included touching their genitals, placing sex toys on their genitals, and having the girls touch Epstein while he masturbated. Epstein’s story is a disgrace and a forever stain on the investment industry.
As the ring unfolds, his girlfriend, Maxwell was also indicted on four criminal counts related to procuring and transporting minors for illegal sex acts and two counts of perjury. Forbes 2020 reports “After Maxwell won the girls’ trust, the indictment alleged, she would try to “normalise sexual abuse” by discussing sexual topics or by undressing in front of them or being present when they were undressed.”
While Epstein himself is a sex trafficker, the larger problem is the source of his wealth; his spending habits, and how his undertakings were protected for over a decade, to say the least. To this date, there is very little knowledge of his money. All that is known is that he was a “successful financier”. He owned a financial management company and managed assets more than $1bn in net worth. Whom these assets belonged to and what they did with it remains a mystery.
Forbes wrote in 2010, “The source of his wealth—a money management firm in the U.S. Virgin Islands—generates no public records, nor has his client list ever been released.” New York Magazine described him as the “international moneyman of mystery”. The same article described him as possessing a “relentless brain that challenges Nobel Prize–winning scientists across the country”. Fox cites that some of his assets included six residences — including his private island and New York City mansion reportedly valued at $77 million. He also owned 15 cars and two private jets.
Last year, New York Magazine’s Intelligencer started publishing articles, which speculated about Epstein’s source of wealth. In one article, there were four wild theories posited all of which pointed to illegal and criminal sources. In another follow up article, a review was done of Epstein’s circle of friends who were all rich and powerful people. Of the theories about his source of wealth, the most plausible was that he blackmailed rich people into investing their money with him. With video and photographic evidence turning up at his residence, it is looking more like he blackmailed his clients with sex. Virginia Roberts Giuffre said in a 2015 court filing that he got her to have sex with his circle of powerful friends in order to get dirt on them. Another theory says that the offshore nature of Epstein’s account lends credence to the fact that his entire company count just be a front for money laundering.
Epstein’s sex trafficking activities date back as far as 1998. New York Magazine published an article detailing their findings after interviewing reputable hedge fund managers about Jefferey Epstein. In the article, many of the managers said they suspected foul play as touching Epstein’s finances. Some of them said they have had their doubts for some decades. Now, these were not just unsubstantiated opinions. Some of them did due diligence, asking around to know who had done business with Epstein’s company and had found none. They came up with intelligent speculations about how Epstein managed his supposed billions. The real problem with this article is that it was just published in 2019. This is over 15 years since Epstein’s human trafficking venture started.
There is no doubt that many Wall Street experts had their doubts about Epstein. But until the investigation took on momentum, we did not hear their doubts. This is the reason we currently call on all Wall Street professionals to work with federal agencies in reporting sketchy activities within their ranks. If more experts had raised doubts over Epstein’s money a long time ago, we could have seen justice done a lot sooner and have a drastically reduced number of child victims.
Conclusion:
The likelihood that Epstein’s corporation could be a money-laundering front poses another issue that he is in league with at least one organised crime ring. This means that other heinous child traffickers may just be lurking in the shadows and may have moved their business to another investment firm. As horrific as this sounds, this is an opportunity to clean up the investment firms from the inside out. It is also an opportunity to perform better due diligence when taking up clients as they would be able to report on such organised crimes. Being an expert in finance also increases the likelihood to trace back the money to the fund managers and IT engineers, equally responsible for concealing the undertakings of illegitimate organisations and report back to local, national, and international law enforcement agencies.
In all, we ask every financial expert, IT expert, fiduciaries, and accountants to join in the fight against child trafficking and better support law enforcement. The more eyes are out there, the faster these criminals can be apprehended, and the victims snatched out of these horrific web-rings and returned to safety.
Beginning with you and I – we can all do much more to report illegal and suspicious acts. We should act in memory of the millions of kids lost in vain, but also stopping all such operations and bringing our children back home.
