In prepared testimony for a House committee, former Apollo Global Management CEO Leon Black said Jeffrey Epstein falsely told him certain financial management fees were tax-deductible, costing him more than $60 million. Black also described being misled by Eps
Leon Black arrived for his prepared statement with a single goal: to “set the record straight” about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein—and to explain why he paid him the money he did.
In testimony shared ahead of his appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Friday. Black. the former CEO of Apollo Global Management. said Epstein duped him out of more than $60 million in financial management fees. He said the core of the deception was a claim about taxes: Epstein told him the fees were tax-deductible.
“Let me state unequivocally that I have never abused a woman,” Black said in the prepared statement. “I have never been with an underage woman. I have never engaged in sex trafficking. I have never paid Epstein for access to women.”
He added, “I was never blackmailed by Epstein. I was not involved with, and had no knowledge of, any of Epstein’s heinous conduct.”
Black’s language is careful, but the timeline he describes is blunt. He said he knew Epstein’s “Jekyll” side, but not “Hyde.” “I knew Jekyll. I didn’t know Hyde,” Black said.
The statement leans heavily on the 2021 findings from the so-called Dechert report. named after the law firm retained to examine how much Black had paid Epstein for financial management advice. the work Epstein did. and whether Black knew about Epstein’s conduct before Epstein’s 2019 arrest on federal child sex trafficking charges.
Black said the Dechert report concluded that he had paid Epstein $158 million. In the same prepared remarks. Black argued that the report also found Epstein performed “highly valuable and legitimate tax and estate planning services” for Black’s family office. with the tax work responsible for “billions of dollars in savings. ” and that Epstein’s work had been vetted by reputable law and accounting firms.
But even as Black pointed to the report’s findings on the nature and value of the services, he focused on the way he believed he was being charged. He said Epstein told him the fees he was paying were “tax-deductible, ’60-cent dollars’”—and that he only learned years later that wasn’t true.
“I.e. what I believed to be $95 million of net fees paid to him over five years was actually $158 million,” Black said. “But, at the time I was led to believe by Epstein that I was paying ’60 cent dollars.’ That assurance was false.”
The dispute over money sits inside a larger conflict that Black framed as personal and moral as well as financial. He described being misled not just about tax treatment but about who Epstein really was—saying he believed he knew one version of Epstein, while insisting he did not know the other.
Black is set to be interviewed later Friday morning by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee as the panel investigates Epstein’s ties to many wealthy and influential individuals.
For Black. the testimony is an attempt to draw a line between the financial relationship he says was distorted and the criminal conduct he says he had no knowledge of—while pressing the committee on a different kind of claim: that Epstein’s assurances cost him more than $60 million in financial management fees.
Leon Black Apollo Global Management Jeffrey Epstein House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Dechert report tax-deductible fees testimony Beverly Hills