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Deposition Transcripts · Segments · #9613
id
9613
deposition id
13
segment index
26
speaker
Page 27
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end seconds
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services, it became a big PR event. And since Apollo dealt with many investors -- including investors from public pension funds, State pension funds, sovereign accounts -- I felt that we ought to, as a firm, and that me, as a person -- the chairman and CEO of the firm -- should address the questions that were brought up through that story. So I went to the independent committee on the board, the board members, and requested that they go out and retain an independent law firm to examine my relationship with Epstein, because, as I said in the opening statement, I had nothing to hide. And so Dechert spent 3 to 4 months reviewing 60,000 documents. They had no restrictions on them. It was no holds barred. I fully cooperated with that, as did 20 other people that they interviewed, to write a report to the board. That Dechert report found a number of things. They found that I paid him not 50 to 75 million, but that I paid him $158 million over a 5-year period from '13 through '17 and that it was all for legitimate business purposes, that he had saved me between 1 and 2 billion dollars, that it was all vetted -- everything he did -- by major law and accounting firms, and that what I paid him on an after-tax basis -- which is what I believed I was paying, as I mentioned -- was akin to a 5 percent commission on what he had saved me. And it also found, importantly, that I had no knowledge of or did not participate in any way with any of his criminal behavior. Q Mr. Black, I'm going to ask at this stage that you try to be respectful of our time and your own. We do want to get you out of here at a reasonable hour, and we have a lot of questions. So I'm going to ask that you answer the questions that I'm asking you. You mentioned an independent --