Leon Black

The February 13, 2013 agreement retained Jeffrey Epstein and Southern Trust Company to assist Paul Weiss and McDermott Will & Emery in advising Leon Black on estate planning ¹. Its stated Paul Weiss notice contacts were Alan Halperin and Kenneth Schneider, not Brad Karp ¹. The contract restricted Epstein and Southern Trust from disclosing privileged or confidential estate-planning information except as authorized by Black or the two law firms, but it does not establish the authorization, privilege status or scope of every later message ³.

A March 2016 agenda provides another example of organized, matter-specific access: Family Office executive Brad Wechsler told Epstein that a meeting with Black would include time for Epstein and Black alone, time with Family Office personnel, and substantial participation by Halperin ⁸. The agenda supports explicit participation in that meeting plan without converting Epstein's role into an Apollo corporate engagement ⁸⁹.

The Dechert report filed by Apollo Global Management states that Black paid Jeffrey Epstein $158 million between 2012 and 2017 for tax, estate-planning and related services ². The same report is a firm-commissioned investigation filed with the SEC, so its account should be read as Apollo's disclosed investigative record rather than as a court adjudication ².

A released Paul Weiss fiscal 2013–2014 invoice summary lists $1,979,761.41 billed to Black, $706,603.94 paid and $1,273,157.47 due ⁴. The listed categories were existing estate planning, Project Art, Family Office work, estate planning for family members, a townhouse acquisition and a Sirius/XM derivative-suit balance, but the page provides no timekeeper-level allocation ⁴. Black-family projections separately list $30 million and $1.56 million in aggregate professional fees without naming any payee, so those projections cannot be allocated to Paul Weiss, Brad Karp, Epstein or another adviser from the cited pages ¹⁰.

In the historical Forms 8865 reasonable-cause workflow, Brad Karp proposed a call, Jeffrey Epstein wrote that “we need to craft” the letter, and Paul Weiss associate Brian Grieve later told Black that revised statements incorporated Epstein's comments ⁵. The located statements identify Leon and Debra Black as taxpayers, and the contemporaneous question asking whether Paul Weiss was writing for all three Apollo founders received no affirmative answer in the reviewed materials ⁷. The evidence therefore does not establish that Paul Weiss represented or drafted those statements for Joshua Harris or Marc Rowan ⁷.

Karp did forward Epstein a Paul Weiss update stating that the IRS had agreed to close Harris's 2014 gift-tax audit with no return change while seeking a valuation adjustment ¹¹. The page establishes transmission of Harris-specific tax information, but it does not establish Harris's authorization, the exact representation boundary or a privilege breach ¹¹. Dechert separately reported that no other Apollo executive retained Epstein, while noting that an Epstein entity bought Apollo IPO shares and that Epstein sought introductions to other executives ⁹.

Brad Karp acted as an intermediary in Black's compensation dispute with Jeffrey Epstein: he said he was about to see Black, later pressed Alan Halperin for a status, and acknowledged a message Epstein labeled for Karp's Leon meeting ⁶. Those messages establish coordination but do not resolve the truth of Epstein's claims about fee formulas, transaction authorship, value or entitlement ⁶.

A contemporaneous chain scheduled an April 23, 2018 lunch for Black, Epstein, Karp and Halperin, while Dechert later reported that a fee-dispute meeting occurred in April 2018 and that Black made no further payments afterward ¹². The reviewed records do not prove that the scheduled lunch and the meeting described by Dechert were the same event, and Dechert did not identify the lawyers at its reported meeting ¹².

Four Nardello memoranda sent to Brad Karp and Lorin Reisner at Paul Weiss state that their respective August 12, August 14, August 19 and October 15 recordings were made with JD's consent ¹³. A separate October 19 email delivered another Four Seasons draft transcript but does not contain the same consent statement ¹³. The files identify deliverables and routing but not the engagement signatory, payer or full task authorization ¹³.

The recording particulars support a bounded identity match to Black's later-pleaded dispute with Guzel Ganieva, including a Four Seasons setting and the October 19 delivery, while the complaint supplies allegations rather than adjudicated findings ¹⁴. No located engagement letter or invoice identifies who retained or paid Nardello, so the relationship should not be described as work for Jeffrey Epstein or any other person without further evidence ¹⁴. Across the surveillance, tax-drafting, fee and billing records, the supported conclusion is episodic client-centered professional assistance rather than a demonstrated systematic arrangement ¹⁵.

The Dechert report filed by Apollo Global Management distinguished Black's personal and Family Office relationship from Apollo's corporate position ⁹. It reported that Jeffrey Epstein did not invest in Apollo-managed funds and that no other Apollo executive retained him, while also reporting that an Epstein entity bought Apollo IPO shares and that Epstein tried to reach other senior executives ⁹. This boundary permits tracking the overlaps without treating every Black matter or founder-specific message as an Apollo corporate engagement ⁹.