Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein tried to buy a luxury palace in Morocco days before his arrest in 2019.

• Bank of America reached a settlement with women who accused the bank of facilitating their sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein.
• The class action accused the bank of ignoring suspicious financial transactions related to Epstein.
• A judge scheduled a court hearing for 2 April to consider approving the deal.

Bank of America has ‌settled a civil lawsuit brought by women who accused the bank of facilitating their sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein, court records showed on Monday.

Lawyers for the bank and the women told Manhattan-based US District Judge Jed Rakoff in a telephone call on 12 March that they had reached a “settlement in principle”, a court filing said.

The terms of the settlement were not immediately clear.

The settlement requires Rakoff’s approval.

Lawyers for both sides are scheduled to submit legal papers about the ⁠settlement by 27 March, and the judge has scheduled a court hearing for 2 April to consider approving the deal.

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Sigrid McCawley, a lawyer for the women, said in a statement: “Today’s resolution of the case against Bank of America is one more step on the road to much deserved justice.”

A spokesperson for Bank of America declined to comment.

The proposed class action, filed in October by a woman using the pseudonym Jane Doe, accused the nation’s second-largest bank of ignoring suspicious financial transactions related to Epstein despite a “plethora” of information about his crimes because it valued profit over protecting victims.

Bank of America has said Doe alleged merely that it provided routine services to people who at the time had no known links to Epstein, and that any suggestion ‌that it ⁠was more deeply involved was “threadbare and meritless”.

Rakoff ruled in January that Bank of America must face Doe’s claims that it knowingly benefited from Epstein’s sex trafficking and obstructed enforcement of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

Among the transactions Doe flagged were payments to Epstein by Apollo Global Management’s billionaire co-founder, Leon Black.

Black stepped down as Apollo’s chief executive in 2021 after a review by an outside ⁠law firm found he had paid Epstein $158 million for tax and estate planning.

He has denied wrongdoing and said he was unaware of Epstein’s criminal conduct.

Black had been scheduled on 26 March to be questioned under oath by lawyers for Doe and Bank of America.

The deposition ⁠is not expected to go forward because of the settlement.

A scheduled 11 May trial will also not take place if Rakoff approves the settlement.

Doe’s lawyers have also sued other alleged enablers of Epstein’s sex trafficking, and in 2023 reached ⁠settlements of $290 million with JPMorgan Chase and $75 million with Deutsche Bank on behalf of his accusers.

AFP reported that a photograph of Britain’s former prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents.

The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein.

They are both currently engulfed in a scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend.

The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and Britain’s former ambassador to Washington sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck.

They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them on a wooden table in front of them. Epstein is wearing a dark shirt and light trousers.

Andrew and Mandelson were arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office over their connections to Epstein, who was convicted of child sexual offences in 2008.

Andrew, who was stripped of his royal titles in 2025, is accused of sharing sensitive documents with Epstein during his time as a UK trade envoy between 2001 and 2011.

Images show Andrew bent over an unidentified female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants.

Andrew settled a US civil lawsuit in 2022 brought by Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide last year.

Files have suggested that Mandelson also leaked official information to Epstein when he was a government minister, including during the 2008 financial crash.

Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide by New York City’s medical examiner.