Senior Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York ordered the unsealing after The New York Times and Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, requested access to 158 exhibits that the territory submitted in 2023, believed to contain, among other things, financial statements for accounts belonging to Epstein or his victims.

In an August letter to the court, New York Times reporter Matthew Goldstein argued that “records documenting the flow of money into Epstein’s account from persons who may have been involved in his sexual abuse of minors and the flow of money to victims are of particular public interest at this time in light of allegations that the federal government has not been forthcoming in providing records from the Epstein investigation, despite promises to do so.”

Attorneys both for the territory and for JPMorgan agreed with the idea of unsealing the bulk of the documents except those containing identifying information about Epstein’s victims or financial information supposedly protected by the Bank Secrecy Act. In an opinion signed last week, Rakoff specified that JPMorgan objected to unsealing one batch of documents because they “contain personal and financial information related to JPMC customers or other third parties that are irrelevant” to the case.

“For instance,” Rakoff wrote, “several exhibits contain internal JPMC correspondence concerning individuals and entities whose activities could pose various forms of financial and/or reputational risk to JPMC. Such individuals and entities, whose conduct was not at all at issue in this litigation, have substantial privacy interests that, as the Second Circuit has directed, ‘should weigh heavily’ in a court’s assessment of countervailing factors to the right of public access.”

Rakoff ordered that those documents remain sealed or redacted but lifted redactions from a pair of deposition transcript excerpts which included the name and email address of someone “unaffiliated with JPMC.”

“Although the individual has a substantial privacy interest in his or her email address … he or she does not have such an interest in the fact that he or she corresponded with a JPMC executive about Epstein,” he wrote.

Rakoff also considered several exhibits, including two versions of a photograph showing “two individuals of minor age” and an email conversation between Epstein and a JPMorgan executive about the picture.

“The privacy interests of these minors clearly warrant continued protection, but the same is not true of either the bulk of the email exchange … or the bulk of the description of that email exchange,” he wrote before directing JPMorgan to provide the court with proposed redactions.

Of the bank’s claim that another 18 documents were protected under the Bank Secrecy Act, Rakoff wrote that the court “is unpersuaded.”

“As the Times and the Journal argue, the confidentiality obligations that the Bank Secrecy Act imposes on regulated financial institutions are distinct from the right of access to judicial documents,” he wrote.

Rakoff gave JPMorgan and the territory until Oct. 30 to supply the unsealed documents to the Times and the Journal and ordered them to file the documents on the public docket by Friday.

The territory sued JPMorgan Chase shortly after settling with Epstein’s estate for $105 million in late 2022, alleging that the financial giant ignored or enabled Epstein’s years of sex trafficking and abuse of multiple minors. JPMorgan called the lawsuit a “masterclass in deflection” in a blistering motion to dismiss the case and argued that the territory had as much knowledge of Epstein’s crimes as anyone.

“USVI did nothing to stop Epstein during this period, notwithstanding the fact that he registered with the USVI as a Tier 1 sex offender,” attorneys for the bank wrote. “To the contrary, during the same period, USVI granted Epstein and his businesses lucrative privileges and massive tax incentives.”

The parties ultimately settled for $75 million in 2023 — less than half of the $190 million sought by the Virgin Islands government.

Rakoff’s order comes one month after a V.I. Superior Court judge denied the Times’s request to unseal reports compiled by the court-appointed special master overseeing Epstein’s estate. Magistrate Judge Simone Van Holton-Turnbull wrote that the records were already deemed confidential in 2020 and that unsealing them could “jeopardize innocent third parties.”

“The facts have not changed over the last five years,” she wrote. “This case is still of immense public interest. Considering recent news media events, the case is at the most intense public interest since Mr. Epstein’s passing. The need to protect third parties from undue harassment, in particular the need to protect victims that were minors at the time, is thereby even greater than when the Estate’s motion was originally granted.”