Epstein Data Wiki

Jean-Pierre Oriol

Properties2
tagsperson, us-virgin-islands, dpnr, coastal-zone-management, regulator, government, deposition
aliasesJean-Pierre L. Oriol, JP Oriol, J.P. Oriol, Oriol, Jean-Pierre

17 min read

Offices the documents recordDirector, Division of Coastal Zone Management, Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources (2012 and after); Acting Commissioner, December 2014; Commissioner Designee, early 2019; Commissioner of DPNR from 20191234
Earliest contact with Epstein in the released files23 December 2010, writing to Epstein’s address under the subject “test”5
What he reported to Epstein’s lawyer in 2016”attached please find pictures of a newly-poured concrete helipad … we issued a verbal cease and desist to all the workers that were present on the island”6
Why the Governor who appointed him says he didAlbert Bryan Jr., under oath, said he hired him as DPNR commissioner “because he is the counterbalance to me”, in the same answer that describes Epstein lobbying him about island permitting and docks4
What a previous Governor told Epstein”I’ve emailed Oriol directly. It is silly.”7
Designated witnessRule 30(b)(6) designee for the Government of the Virgin Islands in Government of the United States Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase, deposed 7 July 20238
MoneyNone. No payment, gift, gratuity, honorarium or thing of value to him appears anywhere in the material reviewed for this page9
AllegationsNone. No survivor account in the material reviewed accuses him of anything, and he has not been charged with any offence

Jean-Pierre L. Oriol is a Virgin Islands government official who regulated Jeffrey Epstein’s two islands for more than a decade. He appears in the released files first as Director of the Division of Coastal Zone Management, the office that issues and enforces the permits Epstein needed to build, then briefly as Acting Commissioner, and from 2019 as Commissioner of the Department of Planning and Natural Resources. In 2023 he was the Government of the Virgin Islands’ designated witness in its lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase, testifying about what the territory’s own files recorded of Epstein.5248

Nothing on this page is a finding of wrongdoing. He is a government official named here for acts done in office. No survivor account in the material reviewed accuses him of anything, and he has not been charged with any offence.

Several of the emails quoted below carry transmission damage in the print itself, an ”=” standing where a character was lost. Supplied characters are given in square brackets, and nothing the print actually carries has been altered. Two deposition pages quoted here interleave line numbers between the words and reorder clauses; only short contiguous spans are quoted from them.

A note on the name, and on the counting

Seven spellings of his name appear in the release. Four are ordinary variants, Jean-Pierre Oriol, JP Oriol, J.P. Oriol and Commissioner Oriol; three are scanning errors, Oriel, Orioll and JP Oriole, and two of those carry documents no correct spelling reaches.10 The hyphen makes no difference to a search and the periods do: JP Oriol and J.P. Oriol return different sets of sheets, and both belong in any count.

Across those forms he appears on more than five hundred sheets, and no figure here is offered as a total. No row in the union is large enough to be a container, so the counts are not inflated by a book held as a single page.10 He is the printed sender on several dozen sheets, which collapse to something over twenty distinct messages in his own hand; the collapse is uneven and no precise number is given.11

One further caution. The bare surname is not used on this page, because the release also contains at least one unrelated person for whom Oriol is a forename, and one large court filing on which the only occurrence of the name is a machine-generated docket stamp that scanned a document token as the surname.12

December 2010: a direct channel

The earliest contact in the release is his own. At 7:42 p.m. on Thursday 23 December 2010 he wrote to Epstein’s address under the subject “test”, and the body is the single word “test”.5 Earlier the same afternoon he had written “pool picture received”.13 The next day, Christmas Eve, Epstein wrote back: “I have tried to call , since 9 , please email me”.13

That is nearly six years before the enforcement action described below, and more than eight years before he became Commissioner. What the documents establish is a direct personal channel between Epstein and the official responsible for coastal permitting, open at the end of 2010.

In 2012 the Division pursued a notice of violation against Nautilus, Inc., the Epstein entity holding Little Saint James. A meeting on 24 April 2012 was held with him as Director of the Division and with two colleagues, and a consent agreement followed carrying a stipulated civil penalty of $50,000. He signed it as Director of the Division of Coastal Zone Management, striking through the printed month and writing the next one above it. The full record of that instrument, including its unsigned drafts, is on the page for Nautilus, Inc.1

December 2014: Acting Commissioner, and a licence argument

On 4 December 2014 he signed Minor CZM Permit No. CZJ-02-15L for vehicle and pedestrian pathways on Little St. James, as Acting Commissioner, above a permittee acceptance block that is blank.1 A message of the same day about a separate road paving permit records it “awaiting review by Mr. Rosa’s supervisor and signature by Acting Commissioner Oriel”, the surname scanned with an “e”.2

A fortnight later he was the obstacle in a different matter. An email to Epstein of 18 December 2014 reports that its writer had “gone back and forth with JP Oriol re the Terminal Facility License for Little St. James Island,” and that the Department took the position that “waterfront” meant “reasonable proximity” to water rather than the shoreline itself. That exchange is set out on the island’s page.14

2015: passed over, and “great help”

In 2015 Governor Kenneth Mapp did not make him Commissioner. A briefing prepared for Epstein before a private meeting with the Governor carries, as its first bullet and ahead of the Treasury, the highway funds and the refinery:

Mapp has not appointed JP Oriol as DPNR Commissioner. To lead the DPNR, he nominated Dawn Henry, an attorney who has worked as legal counsel in the department’s Division of Environmental Protection for the last 10 years.15

Epstein’s reply the same day is two words: “great help”.15 That exchange and the nomination it describes are set out on the page for Dawn Henry, who is named there for the office she was nominated to and not for anything further.

Nothing on this page turns on what Epstein meant by those two words. What the document establishes is that the identity of the DPNR Commissioner was the first item on a briefing prepared for his meeting with a Governor.

Later the same year his own position in a permit decision is recorded, by the architect who opposed it. Writing in a progress report, the architect described negotiating a permit modification and a minor permit in May 2015 and added: “This was not a small feat as Director J.P. Oriol initially felt the Maintenance Building should have been a Major Permit.”16 A major permit would have required a public hearing. That is the architect’s characterisation, written to Epstein’s staff as a professional achievement, and it is quoted here as his account rather than as a finding about what Oriol decided.16

September 2016: the Governor goes to him directly

On the evening of 1 September 2016 a text-message log records one party, whose name is not printed on the sheet, writing: “I also just got another message that I cannot use heavy machines to remove garbage ?? NUTS”. Governor Kenneth Mapp answered at 10:28 that night:

I’ve emailed Oriol directly. It is silly.7

The reply forty seconds later is “Thx”.7 A week earlier the same log carries, from the same counterparty, “STILL NO PERMIT”, and Mapp’s answer: “On a flight. U gotta let them prepare and issue the permit. A bit more patience”.17

That is a sitting Governor telling a private correspondent that he had gone directly to the official running the permitting agency, and calling that official’s restriction silly. Nothing on this page establishes what Oriol received, if anything, or how he answered.

October 2016: the helipad

On 28 October 2016, at 3:07 in the afternoon, he wrote to Epstein’s Virgin Islands lawyer, copying three others including Dawn Henry and Cecile de Jongh, under the subject “Re: activity on great st. james”:

DPNR conducted a site visit to the GS1 island this morning to investigate the location where the concrete trucks were observed. attached please find pictures of a newly-poured concrete helipad. there was also the site preparation for the foundation to be poured for a new steel storage building. there were a number of other violations observed, but those will be included in the NOV.

we issued a verbal cease and desist to all the workers that were present on the island. if we can get to the office in AYH before the end of business hours we will serve the written one6

Four hours later, at 7:12 p.m., Cecile de Jongh forwarded that message to Epstein with five photographs attached.6 The island’s own construction and enforcement record is on the page for Great St. James.

A subsequent message in the same enforcement sequence refused to extend the time to cure the violations. That refusal is not his: it was written by another Division officer, and he appears on it only as a copy recipient.18

2017: the permits

In July 2017 Epstein wrote to him by name, alongside his architect, his lawyer and his assistant: “lets submit the minor permits today. jp we moved some of the huts , to other than xmas cove areas as per your suggeston”.19 Epstein is reporting that structures had been moved to meet the regulator’s own suggestion. In the correspondence around it the word “minor” is used on its own as the name of a class of permit, and it is left as the documents leave it.20

2019: Commissioner Designee, then Commissioner

Letters of 28 January and 12 March 2019 in a later cease and desist matter are signed by the Division’s legal counsel and copied to “Jean-Pierre L. Oriol, Commissioner Designee”.3

He was appointed Commissioner by Governor Albert Bryan Jr., who explained the appointment under oath in the Virgin Islands’ action against JPMorgan Chase.

Asked what Epstein had said to him and what he had said to Epstein at their first meeting, Bryan testified that Epstein had been concerned about what his approach would be towards the island and towards permitting, and that Epstein “had several docks on the island” and had had trouble “getting those through DPNR”.4 Asked what he had told Epstein, Bryan described himself as a strong “business guy” and less strong on the environmental side, and said that he had consequently hired Oriol as commissioner of DPNR, “because he is the counterbalance to me”.4

⚠ That answer is quoted sparingly for a reason. The sheet is a condensed transcript whose two columns the extraction has merged, so the fragments of Bryan’s reply appear out of reading order: the clause naming the appointment prints after the clause giving the reason. Only spans the sheet prints in order are placed in quotation marks above; the rest of the answer is given in description. No sentence is reassembled into a quotation on this page.4

The appointment and the lobbying sit in the same answer. Whether Bryan was describing cause or coincidence is not resolved by the transcript, and nothing further is inferred here. On the same page he was asked whether there had been any discussion with Epstein or his lawyer about Epstein or people close to him contributing to his campaign, and whether he had ever talked to Epstein about money. He answered “No” to both. Those are Bryan’s answers about himself and they are recorded here so that they are not mistaken for evidence about Oriol, who is not a party to that exchange.4

July 2023: the designated witness

On 7 July 2023 he was deposed as the Rule 30(b)(6) designee for the Government of the Virgin Islands, which is to say as the government’s own designated voice rather than as a witness to his own conduct. The transcript pages carry the heading “GVI BY JEAN-PIERRE ORIOL 30(b)(6)”.8

Counsel put it to him that “no complaints were received regarding Epstein” across that twenty-year span. He answered: “That’s correct.”8 The next question, whether there had been any interactions between the territory’s police department and Epstein beyond formal complaints during that twenty-year period, drew an objection from counsel.8

That testimony is institutional. It is evidence about what the territory’s files recorded, and what they did not, over two decades in which the permitting record set out above was being made. The material underlying those questions concerns complainants and is not detailed here.

What the record does not establish

  • No money. Searches of the released files pairing his name-forms with payment, gift, gratuity, honorarium, retainer, salary and campaign vocabulary returned nothing. No instrument in the material reviewed records anything of value passing to him.9
  • Not every nearby act is his. The refusal to extend the cure period is another officer’s. Answers about campaign contributions in the JPMorgan litigation are Governor Bryan’s, not his. Testimony about a sum paid to the Department is another witness’s. None of the three is attributed to him here.18
  • Nothing from his own conduct is alleged by anyone. The documents record him issuing permits, negotiating a penalty, conducting a site visit, serving a cease and desist, pressing for a higher permit class, and testifying. They do not record him being asked for a favour and granting it.

Method note

Claims on this page are drawn from the released documents cited in the footnotes, each pinned to the sheet and page where the quoted words appear. Counts are floors over a union of seven name-forms and the bare surname is excluded, because the release contains both an unrelated person whose forename is Oriol and a docket stamp that scanned a machine token as the surname. Where a sender is not printed on a sheet, it has not been supplied from context. One sentence offered to this desk as a quotation from the 2023 deposition could not be found as printed text and is not used. Where a transcript page is quoted, only spans the sheet prints in order are placed in quotation marks; transcript line numbers are omitted from those spans, and no fragment is reordered to form a sentence. The Division’s office address and telephone and fax lines print on one of the 2019 sheets and none is reproduced.

Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. The 2012 notice of violation, the meeting of Apr 24, 2012, the consent agreement and its $50,000 stipulated penalty, and Minor CZM Permit No. CZJ-02-15L of Dec 4, 2014, are set out with their pins on Nautilus, Inc., including the executed signature page and the blank permittee acceptance block. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01091526 p.5. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Message of Dec 4, 2014 headed “Privileged and Confidential - Road Paving Permit - December 4, 2014”: the permit is “awaiting review by Mr. Rosa’s supervisor and signature by Acting Commissioner Oriel”. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00657409 p.1. The surname is scanned “Oriel” on this sheet. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Letters of Jan 28 and Mar 12, 2019 from the Division of Coastal Zone Management, signed by its legal counsel and copied to “Jean-Pierre L. Oriol, Commissioner Designee”, quoted with their pins on Dawn Henry. The Division’s office address and telephone and fax lines print on one of these sheets and none is reproduced. ↩ ↩2

  4. Deposition of Albert Bryan, Jr., Case 1:22-cv-10904-JSR Document 283-2, filed Aug 14, 2023. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02815009 p.3. The page interleaves line numbers between the words and reorders clauses; only short contiguous spans are quoted. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  5. Jean-Pierre L. Oriol to Epstein’s address, Dec 23, 2010 7:42 PM, subject “test”. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01797046 p.1. Also https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02018126 p.1. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. Jean-Pierre Oriol to Epstein’s Virgin Islands lawyer, Oct 28, 2016 3:07:33 PM EDT, copied to three others, subject “Re: activity on great st. james”; forwarded to Epstein by Cecile de Jongh at 7:12:20 PM the same evening with five photographs attached. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01739030 p.1. The lawyer’s address and the recipients’ addresses are blacked out or withheld on this sheet and none is reproduced. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. Text-message log in the release, headed “Platform: SMS” and “Timezone: UTC+0000”. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01620461 p.4. Date: the log is dated internally, 22 August to 3 September 2016; p.3 carries the header “2016/09/01” and p.5 “2016/09/02”, and the messages on p.4 run from 07:13 pm to 10:29 pm between them, so they fall on the evening of 1 September 2016. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. Deposition of Jean-Pierre Oriol as Rule 30(b)(6) designee for the Government of the Virgin Islands, Jul 7, 2023, in Government of the United States Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02814486 p.8 and https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02815027 p.8. Both pages interleave line numbers and reorder clauses; only the short answer is quoted. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  9. Searches pairing his name-forms with payment, fee, gift, gratuity, honorarium, retainer, salary, bonus and campaign-contribution vocabulary returned no instrument recording anything of value passing to him. ↩ ↩2

  10. Measured against the released corpus: “jean-pierre oriol” 210 sheets / 146 containers (the unhyphenated spelling returns the same set); “jp oriol” 102/81; “j p oriol” 29/29, a different set, because the periods split one token into two; “commissioner oriol” 5/5; “oriol, jean-pierre” 3/3. The scanning errors “oriel” and “orioll” and the form “jp oriole” 25/25 add further sheets, including the December 2014 road permit and the May 2015 architect’s report. No row in the union exceeds 8,165 characters. ↩ ↩2

  11. Sheets bearing his name in the printed sender position collapse unevenly: single messages exist in multiple copies and several sheets are other people forwarding him. No exact figure is published for that reason. ↩

  12. One large filing in the release carries the surname once, inside a machine-generated docket stamp, and that occurrence is not evidence of his presence in the document. A separate personnel list in the release names an unrelated individual whose forename is Oriol. ↩

  13. Epstein to Jean-Pierre L. Oriol, Dec 24, 2010 2:56:16 PM, quoting Oriol’s message of Dec 23, 2010 3:30 PM. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01832478 p.1. ↩ ↩2

  14. Email to Epstein of Dec 18, 2014 on the Terminal Facility Licence, quoted with its pin on Little Saint James. ↩

  15. Briefing prepared for Epstein before a private meeting with Governor Kenneth Mapp, and Epstein’s two-word reply the same day, both quoted with their pins on Dawn Henry. ↩ ↩2

  16. Architect’s progress report describing the May 5, 2015 permit negotiations, quoted with its pin on Daphne Wallace. The characterisation is the architect’s own. ↩ ↩2

  17. The same log, https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01620461 p.2, under the header “2016/08/24”. A telephone number prints elsewhere in this log and is not reproduced. The counterparty is labelled only “Unknown” on the sheet and is not identified here. Each of the Governor’s runs on this page is opened with his name and closed with his initials, which is how the quoted message is attributed; the reply forty seconds later is an independent check on direction. Other material on this log is unrelated and is not reproduced. ↩

  18. The message refusing to extend the cure period is at https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01784748 p.2 and https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01796308 p.3; it is another Division officer’s and he is a copy recipient only. Answers about campaign contributions in the JPMorgan litigation are Governor Albert Bryan Jr.’s; testimony about a sum paid to the Department is a different witness’s. None is attributed to him. ↩ ↩2

  19. Jeffrey Epstein to Jean-Pierre Oriol and three others, Jul 25, 2017 11:33 AM. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01039710 p.1 and https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01039425 p.2. ↩

  20. In the same 2017 correspondence the word “minor” is used as a bare noun for a class of permit, for example in a message of Jun 21, 2017 under the subject “Re: J.P. Oriol”. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01042914 p.1. The abbreviation is not expanded inside any quotation on this page. ↩

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