What specific evidence do Treasury and DOJ files list about foreign banks used by Jeffrey Epstein?
Executive summary
Treasury files and related congressional summaries assert that Jeffrey Epstein routed large sums through foreign banks, including “now sanctioned Russian banks” and specific links to Alfa Bank and Sberbank, with reporting that wire transfers tied to these institutions ran into the hundreds of millions and were part of a broader $1.5 billion-plus transaction picture revealed in government and court records [1] [2] [3]. Public filings and bank-produced suspicious-activity reports (SARs) further show that major U.S. banks flagged extensive cross-border wiring and correspondent relationships in Epstein’s dealings, even as investigators and lawmakers press for fuller Treasury and DOJ disclosures [4] [5] [6].
1. What the Treasury’s “Epstein file” explicitly alleges about foreign banks
Senate Finance Committee materials reporting on the Treasury Department’s Epstein file state plainly that Epstein “used several now sanctioned Russian banks for hundreds of millions of dollars in wire transfers,” and that those transfers appear to correlate with the movement of women or girls around the world—language Senator Wyden relied on when urging the DOJ to subpoena internal bank records related to Epstein [1]. Those same committee briefings say Treasury’s holdings include SARs and other investigative notes that document these cross-border flows, although the public summaries do not reproduce raw bank-ledger details in the released excerpts [1] [3].
2. Which foreign banks appear by name in unsealed documents
Unsealed court filings connected to litigation with JPMorgan and subsequent media reporting identify two Russian banks by name—Alfa Bank and Sberbank—as being linked to at least two accounts associated with Epstein transactions, with the transactional window cited in some reports spanning October 2003 through July 2019 [2] [7]. Those media accounts and court-ordered disclosures are the immediate public evidence tying Epstein financial activity to those specific Russian institutions; the underlying bank account numbers and wire-by-wire prosecution exhibits, if they exist, have not been published in the materials summarized here [2] [7].
3. What major U.S. banks’ SARs and internal reports say about foreign correspondent activity
Internal reports and SARs produced by banks or described in oversight letters show that JPMorgan and others flagged more than $1 billion in Epstein-linked transactions and explicitly noted wire transfers “made by Epstein to Russian banks,” with JPMorgan reportedly identifying thousands of transactions that it believed were suspicious—including transfers routed through correspondent accounts—while also referring those matters to Treasury at various points [4] [8] [9]. Senate and House oversight letters have demanded copies of SARs and transaction-level details from BNY Mellon, JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, reflecting lawmakers’ view that bank reports contain the granular evidence Treasury and DOJ need to “follow the money” [5] [6] [10].
4. How the DOJ’s document releases and warnings affect the picture of foreign-bank evidence
The Department of Justice released thousands of Epstein-related documents, creating the public “Epstein Library,” but the DOJ cautioned that some material in those disclosures included unverified or false claims, complicating immediate reliance on every assertion in the trove [11] [12] [13]. Those DOJ releases reproduced investigative leads and exhibits that overlap with Treasury and bank-produced SARs, yet the government has resisted wholesale public liberation of the full Treasury SAR set, which Senate legislation and oversight requests have sought precisely because those SARs may contain detailed correspondent-bank routing data and beneficiary names [3] [5].
5. Limits of the public record and what remains to be produced
Public sources summarized here show clear statements—by the Treasury’s file as described by Senator Wyden, in unsealed court records, and in bank SAR disclosures—that foreign banks including Alfa Bank and Sberbank received Epstein-related wires and that Russian correspondent channels figure in hundreds of millions to over a billion dollars of transfers [1] [2] [4] [3]. What is not publicly shown in these excerpts are comprehensive transaction ledgers, complete SAR attachments, or DOJ-forensic reconstructions that map each wire to a specific person or trafficking event; congressional subpoenas and bills seek exactly those withheld documents from Treasury, DOJ and the banks [10] [3].