Epstein Data Wiki

Southern Financial, LLC

Properties2
tagsentity, usvi, deutsche-bank, southern-trust, kyc, 2013, 2019
aliasesSouthern Financial, Southern Financial, LLC, SOUTHFINANMD, Southern Financial Relationship

8 min read

⚠ what this page is about, and what it is not

A U.S. Virgin Islands company Jeffrey Epstein registered in February 2013, which became the vehicle for his Deutsche Bank derivatives book, and which is also the wiring account on an SDNY exhibit of payments to potential co-conspirators. ⚠⚠ “Southern Financial” is also the name of a Deutsche Bank internal relationship label covering many accounts. The two are not the same thing and this page keeps them apart.

WhatSOUTHERN FINANCIAL, LLC, a U.S. Virgin Islands limited liability company, Corp. No. 5831641
Registered25 February 2013, certified by the Lieutenant Governor of the Virgin Islands1
Initial managerJeffrey Epstein, with opening capital of US$1,0001
OwnerSole member: Southern Trust Company, Inc., of which Epstein was sole shareholder1
⭐ What it heldA balance sheet running $135.4m in 2013 to $242.0m in 2014 and $233.7m by 2017. ⚠ On the November 2014 sheet the member’s contributions were $260,309,527 against equity of $241,982,2802
⚠⚠ AndIt is the wiring account on eight rows of an SDNY exhibit of payments to potential co-conspirators, $632,000 in total3

Southern Financial, LLC was two things at once, and no page on this wiki has previously joined them: Epstein’s derivatives book at Deutsche Bank, and the account from which his pilot and an immunised non-prosecution-agreement co-conspirator were paid.

The company

Articles of Organization were filed on 25 February 2013. The Lieutenant Governor’s Certificate of Existence gives the corporation number 583164 and certifies the company “duly registered in the Territory”. Epstein is the initial manager; the opening capital is US$1,000; the organizer and the resident agent are third parties.1

The Operating Agreement of the following day makes the sole member Southern Trust Company, Inc., of which Epstein was the sole shareholder. Epstein’s Financial Trust Company was merged into it during 2013.1

⚠ The purpose clause is boilerplate and states no business. ⚠ No dissolution instrument, no annual report and no merger instrument was found, and the page does not say when or whether the company ceased.

The bank relationship, and the clearance

⚠⚠ THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL DOCUMENT IS A CLEARANCE, NOT A BREACH. Deutsche Bank’s own know-your-customer review of the relationship, printed 15 July 2019, rates it High Risk. Its politically-exposed-person answer for Epstein reads “Connection with Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton”. Its source-of-wealth section describes him as a “registered sex offender”.

And its case comments record: “Our review did not identify any red flags”.

It was approved by Stewart Oldfield on 5 September 2018, by a second officer on 6 September, and by AML Compliance on 25 September 2018.4

⚠ The page states what the document says and does not characterise the judgement. A bank recording a client as a registered sex offender, rating the relationship High Risk, and then finding no red flags is a fact about the bank’s process, and the institutional question belongs at Deutsche Bank.

The exit is dated. Offboarded by Global Markets at the end of 2016; re-onboarded, and at one point described internally as the “largest trading counterparty of the KCP capital markets group”; on 2 April 2019 an instruction records “This is being done to exit the relationship”; the corporate and investment bank offboarded on 15 April 2019; and on 8 and 9 July 2019, two days after Epstein’s arrest, the accounts were hard-closed.4

The payments exhibit

⚠⚠ This is the finding that sits outside the bank file. An SDNY exhibit of payments to potential co-conspirators shows Southern Financial as the wiring account on eight rows totalling $632,000: four to Lawrence P. Visoski, Epstein’s pilot, marked “Promissory note” and “Loan”; two to Lesley Groff; and two rows whose beneficiaries are covered on the sheet and are not supplied here.3

⚠ The exhibit’s own framing is the government’s, not this page’s, and ⚠ being named in it is not a finding of wrongdoing against anyone named.

⚠⚠ What this page refuses to say, and why

It does not give a document count. The phrase returns more than fourteen thousand documents and about a third of that is boilerplate: a daily deposit report listing a relationship manager’s entire book, in which this entity is one row among others; roughly 1,578 pages of a placement memorandum carrying the name as a running head; and automated valuation statements. A count here would measure the bank’s printing habits.5

It does not conflate the company with the label. SOUTHERN FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIP is a Deutsche Bank internal grouping covering 76 accounts. The LLC is one thing; the relationship label is another, and an earlier desk note mistook the second for the whole and concluded, wrongly, that no company existed.5

It gives no throughput total. ⚠ The swap and statement documents are daily re-photographs of the same positions, and multi-page statements are split into separate one-page documents. Adding them would be counting the same money repeatedly.

And it quotes no doc_type count. ⚠⚠ The classifier is unreliable on financial classes: 321 documents here are labelled court.plea_agreement and 313 contain no form of the word “plea”.5

Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. The company. Certificate of Existence and Articles of Organization: EFTA01268304 p.1, read at the image, signed by Lieutenant Governor Gregory R. Francis, Corp. No. 583164, certifying registration on 25 February 2013; the Articles give Jeffrey Epstein as initial manager and US$1,000 initial capital, with a named organizer and resident agent who are not the subject of this page. The Operating Agreement of 26 February 2013 makes Southern Trust Company, Inc. the sole member. ⚠ The purpose clause is boilerplate and states no business. ⚠ Not established from any document read: any dissolution, any annual report, any merger instrument, or what the phrase “(and subsidiary)” refers to in the financial statements. ⚠⚠ A standing desk note said this entity did not exist and was only a bank label. That note is struck; the certificate refutes it, and the earlier sampler had met the label without reaching the charter. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  2. The balance sheets. A seven-point series across 2013 to 2017 runs $135.4m → $242.0m → $233.7m. The November 2014 statement, EFTA01383608, rendered by the census, shows member contributions of $260,309,527 against equity of $241,982,280, with $88.5 million, 37%, held as an interest in the Haze Trust. ⚠⚠ NO TOTAL THROUGHPUT IS STATED ANYWHERE ON THIS PAGE. The swap and statement documents are daily re-photographs of the same positions, and multi-page statements are split into separate single-page documents; summing them would count the same money many times over. ⚠ The desk did not re-render this statement. ↩

  3. The payments exhibit. EFTA00092643 pp.2-4, the SDNY exhibit of payments to potential co-conspirators, rendered and read by the census. Southern Financial appears as the wiring account on eight rows totalling $632,000: four to Lawrence P. Visoski, marked “Promissory note” and “Loan”; two to Lesley Groff; and two rows whose beneficiaries are covered on the sheet. ⚠⚠ A REDACTION-DEFEAT TRAP EXISTS ON p.2 and is recorded at this wiki’s own document page, which states the identical limit; the census reached it independently and neither source completes the covered names. Nothing covered is supplied here. ⚠ Being named in a government exhibit of payments is not a finding of wrongdoing, and the framing of the exhibit is the government’s. ↩ ↩2

  4. The KYC review and the exit. EFTA01417330, 74 pages, printed 15 July 2019, is the relationship’s know-your-customer file: rated High Risk; PEP answer “Connection with Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton”; source-of-wealth describing Epstein as a “registered sex offender”; case comments “Our review did not identify any red flags”; approvals dated 5, 6 and 25 September 2018. 174 further documents in the population are KYC rejections. The closure sequence: Global Markets offboarding at the end of 2016; re-onboarding, with the relationship described internally as the “largest trading counterparty of the KCP capital markets group”; 2 April 2019, “This is being done to exit the relationship”; 15 April 2019 corporate and investment bank offboard; 8 and 9 July 2019, accounts hard-closed, at EFTA01423754. ⚠ These readings are the census’s, filed at _desk/gate-reports/2026-09-19T204434Z-southern-financial-census.md; the desk re-rendered the certificate and the payments exhibit but did NOT independently re-render the 74-page KYC file, and that is stated rather than implied. ↩ ↩2

  5. Why this page carries no population figure. The phrase "Southern Financial" returns more than fourteen thousand documents and roughly a third of that is boilerplate: 2,215 are a daily deposit report listing a relationship manager’s whole book, in which this entity is one row beside unrelated clients; 1,578 are pages of a placement memorandum carrying the name as a running head; 1,325 are automated valuation statements. ⚠⚠ SOUTHERN FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIP is a Deutsche Bank internal label covering 76 accounts and is NOT the LLC. ⚠ A contaminant is resolved by a document rather than by the desk: EFTA01362583 p.1 records the bank’s own conclusion that alerts referencing Southern Financial Services Inc and Southern Financial Group Inc are false positives and that “This entity has no relation to either.” ⚠⚠ No doc_type count is quoted: the classifier labels 321 documents here court.plea_agreement and 313 of them contain no form of the word “plea”, being ISDA schedules and placement-memorandum pages. The desk measured the classifier at 5% on that label, 52% on financial.equity_swap and 100% on email.header, and the finding is recorded in _desk/TOOLS.md. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

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