⚠ what this page is about, and what it is not
The Deutsche Bank markets officer who ran the monthly settlement of Epstein’s Twitter equity swap, and whose e-mails record the approval chain the bank used to move the money. No allegation against him was found anywhere in the release, and none is made here.
| Who | Vahe Stepanian, Assistant Vice President, Key Client Partners, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., per his own signature block1 |
| In the release | 6,274 documents2 |
| His own messages | 2,929 sender rows across 2,070 documents, 25 November 2011 to 21 October 20202 |
| ⭐ The act, 28 May 2015 | He sends the month’s Twitter swap settlement to Epstein’s accountant for sign-off: “Rich- please confirm you agree with the below details of the monthly Twitter swap settlement.”3 |
| ⚠ The procedure | ”We will call Darren to verbally confirm wire transfer to DBAG London after receipt of your approval.”3 |
| The figures on that sheet | DB Receives 1,529,290.08 USD · reset date 27 May 2015 · value date 1 June 2015 · interest 4,290.08 · equity 1,525,000.003 |
| Classification | ”Strictly Confidential” on every sheet of the thread3 |
| Scale of it | 63 of his messages carry “swap” in the subject, 30 of them the bare subject “Monthly TWTR Swap Reset [SC]“2 |
What the monthly reset looked like
Southern Financial, LLC held an equity swap on Twitter stock with Deutsche Bank. Once a month the position was reset and one side paid the other. The document read for this page is one such reset, in five parts across four sheets, all marked “Classification: Strictly Confidential”.3
Stepanian’s message of 28 May 2015 is the request for approval. It goes to Richard Kahn, Epstein’s accountant, and copies five Deutsche Bank colleagues. It states the amount, the reset and value dates, and the split between interest and equity, notes the previous reset date of 27 April 2015, and says a Bloomberg screenshot of Twitter’s closing prices is included.3
⚠ The money did not move on the bank’s own authority. The sheet sets out the sequence: the accountant approves, then the bank telephones a person the message calls only “Darren” for a verbal confirmation, and only then does the wire go to DBAG London. ⚠⚠ The sheet gives no surname for “Darren” and this desk does not supply one.3
What the bank told Epstein directly
On 28 May 2015, thirteen minutes after Stepanian’s message, a colleague sent the running total to Epstein himself, addressed on the sheet as “jeffrey E.”:
Jeffrey — per our conversation, in the past three reset payments, DB paid Southern Financial $1,255,898.01 ($905,092.06 for February’s reset, $189,549.51 for March’s and $161,256.44 for April’s). With the $1,529,290.08 reset payment for May, Southern Financial will have net paid $273,392.07 to DB.
The change in option premium as of yesterday’s close was $357,952.72 in favor of Southern Financial (DB paid Southern Financial $728,278.28 and this option was marked yesterday at close at $370,325.56).
⚠ This is the arithmetic of the position stated to the client in the clear, and it is the clearest single statement in the documents read here of what the swap was worth month to month. ⚠ The desk has not checked these figures against any other record, and prints them as the bank’s own statement rather than as an independent accounting.3
2 June 2015: chasing the approval
Five days later the approval had not come. Stepanian wrote again:
Rich — I’m following up on the below. Please confirm you agree with the details.
He repeated the Darren-and-DBAG-London sentence verbatim. A managing director then wrote to Kahn: “Rich, I just tried you on your cell. Can you please update the team on timing. Thanks”.3
⚠ What the sequence documents is that the settlement waited on one man’s sign-off, and that a managing director was calling his mobile to get it.
⚠ A password printed in the clear
This “Strictly Confidential” chain carries the password to its own attachment in the clear, in the body of an e-mail rather than under separate cover as the covering message had promised. ⚠ The password is not reproduced here, and the attachment is not in the release read for this page. It is recorded because the handling is the finding.3
What the rest of the traffic is
63 of his messages carry “swap” in the subject, including eight on “Richard Kahn / Epstein Total Return Swap”. Elsewhere his subjects run on “indication on WTI risk reversals”, “Longer Dated EUR Downside (3y structures)”, “Southern Financial - IA Request”, “Jeepers transfer”, “MBLY Tender” and “SFL and Gratitude America Ltd”. ⚠ The desk opened one document and does not characterise the others.2
What this page does not say
No allegation against him was found anywhere in the release.4
⚠⚠ NOTHING HERE SUGGESTS HE DID ANYTHING IMPROPER. He is a markets officer executing and settling a derivative position for a client of the bank, seeking written approval before moving money. ⚠ Whether Deutsche Bank should have had this client at all is an institutional question and belongs at Deutsche Bank, not to any individual named here.
Related
Footnotes
Footnotes
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Identification. Title and employer are taken from his own signature block as it prints on the fourth sheet of EFTA01401829, whose page stamp reads
EFTA01401832:Vahe Stepanian / Assistant Vice President I Key Client Partners / Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.⚠ That sheet was read in the text layer and not separately rendered. ⚠ His telephone number prints on it and his mobile and e-mail are redacted; none is reproduced here, because nothing on this page turns on them. ↩ -
The measurement.
"Vahe Stepanian"returns 6,274 documents. ⚠ The hinge is page scope: a document counts when any one of its pages carries the phrase, and a long copy list counts. In the e-mail metadata store he is the normalised sender of 2,929 rows across 2,070 documents, 25 November 2011 to 21 October 2020; a looser match on the sender string returns 3,319, and the gap is not investigated here. 63 rows carrySwapin the subject: 30Monthly TWTR Swap Reset [SC], 12RE:of the same, 8RE: Richard Kahn / Epstein Total Return Swap [I], the rest variants. ⚠ Nodoc_typefigure is printed, under the rule in_desk/TOOLS.md. ⚠ No deduplicated message total is stated, and the five subject lines quoted at the end of the page are subject strings from the metadata store, not documents the desk opened. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 -
28 May and 2 June 2015. EFTA01401829, a four-sheet chain carrying five messages. EFTA01401829 p.2 and EFTA01401829 p.3 were rendered and read at the image at 700 dpi (their own page stamps read
EFTA01401830andEFTA01401831); p.1 and p.4 were read in the text layer and are so marked wherever quoted. The chain, oldest first: Stepanian to Kahn,Thursday, May 28, 2015 3:39 PM, the settlement details quoted above; a colleague to'jeffrey E.',Thursday, May 28, 2015 3:52 PM, the running totals quoted above; the same colleague tojeffrey E.,Tuesday, June 02, 2015 8:08 AM; Stepanian to Kahn,Tuesday, June 02, 2015 12:28 PM, following up; and a managing director to Stepanian and Kahn,Tue, 02 Jun 2015 16:05:47 -0400. All five carryClassification: Strictly Confidential. ⚠ The attachment password is deliberately NOT reproduced on this page, and no location for it is given. ⚠ The attachment itself, and the Bloomberg screenshot referred to, are not in this document. ⚠ “DBAG London” is not expanded, because the sheet does not expand it. ⚠ Three further Deutsche Bank people are on the copy list and are named nowhere on this page, because nothing here turns on them. ⚠ No account number appears on these sheets and none is printed here. ⚠⚠ No document read for this page records whether Kahn approved, or when the wire went. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 -
Absences, each scoped. No allegation against him was found in the release read for this page. ⚠⚠ This is a narrow check against 6,274 documents and is stated as one: the desk opened one document. It ran no systematic adverse sweep, searched none of the six derived stores, and opened none of the other 62 swap-subject messages. ⚠ A deeper pass is owed, and this page records the debt rather than implying it does not exist. ↩