Apollo chief Marc Rowan consulted Epstein on firm’s tax affairs

Top Apollo Global Management executives including chief Marc Rowan held wide-ranging discussions over the firm’s tax arrangements with Jeffrey Epstein throughout the 2010s, despite the private capital firm having previously said it “never did any business” with the child sex offender.

Files released by the US Department of Justice on Friday show that Epstein requested and received internal Apollo financial documents and emailed, met and called some of the firm’s most senior decision makers on sensitive matters.

The documents raise questions about Apollo’s statement in 2020, issued after Epstein died in jail while awaiting trial on federal charges of trafficking minors for sex, that the private capital group “never did any business with Jeffrey Epstein at any point in time”.

In 2021 Apollo published the findings of a review from law firm Dechert that confirmed the statement was “accurate”.

Apollo co-founder Leon Black was forced to step down in 2021 after revelations that he paid Epstein more than $150mn for personal financial advice.

Files released last week reveal that Rowan, Black’s successor, was also in contact with Epstein during the mid-2010s. Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008.

Rowan repeatedly corresponded with Epstein, who ingratiated himself among senior figures in finance by positioning himself as an expert on tax planning, over the value of Apollo’s so-called “tax receivable agreement”.

The TRA was a stream of payments owed to Apollo’s founders and pre-IPO shareholders, marked at hundreds of million of dollars on the US firm’s balance sheet.

In March 2016, Rowan forwarded a detailed internal TRA calculation to Epstein, who complained that he could not download an attached image. Rowan responded: “I am getting the calculation detail.”

Apollo, which today has $908bn of assets under management, bought out the TRA from the firm’s founders for $570mn in 2021, a transaction that led to a shareholder lawsuit which alleges the purchase was unnecessary. The case is pending in a Delaware state court. Apollo has denied wrongdoing.

Epstein’s contact with Rowan appears to have extended to various issues. In one email he describes a meeting that appears to have been with the Apollo chief: “Mark [sic] was here this morning; we talked Athene, Montauk, Rothschild. Planes boats etc.”

Apollo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Epstein was also involved in discussions in 2016 about a possible tax “inversion” deal that would have involved redomiciling Apollo overseas to reduce its tax bill.

Emails show that the disgraced financier touted the expertise of Swiss private bank Edmond de Rothschild and hosted a meeting between senior executives of the two firms at his Manhattan townhouse.

“using rothschild for the inversion allows interesting structures,” Epstein wrote. Rowan quickly responded: “Agreed. Cynthia has been slow to call my partner, Gernot Lohr, back.”

The email appears to refer to Cynthia Tobiano, an executive at Edmond de Rothschild, while Lohr is an Apollo partner. Epstein forwarded Rowan’s email to Ariane de Rothschild, the bank’s chief executive, who replied that she was “surprised” a call had not been made.

Edmond de Rothschild did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In 2015, another Apollo partner, Sanjay Patel, emailed Epstein. “I run Apollo’s business in Europe. Marc Rowan asked me to catch up with you regarding the Rothschild conversations.” Patel and Epstein then arranged a phone call together.

That year, Epstein wrote to Ariane de Rothschild, “the apollo people are ready to start doing things together with you , sanjay patel. is their man in europe. based in london.”

Epstein asked Rowan over email the following year: “have you made any progress on the inversion?” The Apollo co-founder responded “minimal”. The inversion ultimately never took place.

The contacts, which occurred from 2011 to 2018, were revealed in a new trove of millions of emails released by the US Department of Justice on Friday.

The files have shed new light on Epstein’s relationships with leading businesspeople and politicians, including Elon Musk, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the UK’s former ambassador to the US, Lord Peter Mandelson.

In 2021, after Apollo stated that it had never conducted any business with Epstein, the firm’s board appointed the law firm Dechert to further examine the claim.

Its report found that Epstein “unsuccessfully sought to pitch business opportunities to certain Apollo senior executives” and the firm did not retain Epstein for his services.

Dechert added that while contacts with Epstein do not “render any prior statements false or misleading”, they did render statements on “do business with” or have a “relationship with” Epstein “perhaps more nuanced than might appear at first glance”.

According to the newly released files, Rowan and Imran Siddiqui, a former senior partner at Apollo, met with executives from Edmond de Rothschild at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in early 2016.

Apollo’s former chief legal officer, John Suydam, also called or met Epstein on multiple occasions, according to emails disclosed in the files.

In 2014, Black’s family office forwarded to Epstein an internal share offering document for Athene Holding, its life insurance affiliate, an email shows.

As Apollo prepared to take Athene public the following year, Epstein appeared to propose a plan that he claimed could save Apollo’s co-founders up to $300mn in tax, for which he would charge a 25 per cent success fee.

“I m happy to work on the transaction. but i would like to agree beforehand, on a fee for success,” Epstein wrote. “To be clear if there is a 300 overall benefit. then each founder would pay 25m,” he added in the email to Black’s executive assistant. “If OK =with you . marc and josh would have to sign on. . if not . =AO ok with me.”

Epstein emailed Rowan a month later stating that Black said the decision over the fee was up to him and another Apollo co-founder, Josh Harris.

The documents also show that Epstein was involved in discussions at Apollo about an apparent issue with US tax forms relating to foreign partnerships, along with Brad Karp, chair of law firm Paul Weiss, which has long represented Apollo and Black personally.

In September 2016 the head of Black’s family office, Brad Wechsler, emailed Apollo’s then head of tax finance, Suzanne Wong, asking for Karp and Epstein to be copied in on emails and included on “upcoming calls”.

“For Brad its to keep him abreast of activity; for jeffrey its also get the benefit of his substantive expertise,” Weschler added. Wong replied: “Will do.”

The files released on Friday show that Epstein also emailed Rowan in 2016 offering “to explain my thinking” on the tax issue. Rowan did not appear to respond to the message.