SEC urged to investigate Apollo over Epstein ties

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Two US teachers’ unions have asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate private markets giant Apollo Global Management for its “lack of candour” over its ties to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors told the SEC’s enforcement director Margaret Ryan in a letter on Tuesday that they believed Apollo’s communications to investors “give an inaccurate and incomplete picture of the firm and its partners’ connections to Epstein”.

It comes after the FT this month reported top Apollo executives, including chief executive Marc Rowan, had wide-ranging discussions with Epstein. They discussed the valuation of a tax asset owned by Apollo’s founders and the possibility of shifting the company’s headquarters abroad. Epstein received internal Apollo documents and was in contact with senior decision makers at the group.

The contacts, disclosed as part of the US Justice Department’s release of millions of Epstein-related documents last month, raise questions about Apollo’s statement in 2020 that the group itself “never did any business with Jeffrey Epstein at any point in time”.

The unions said in their letter to the SEC: “We are troubled by Apollo’s seeming inability to be forthcoming about the extent to which Epstein was a personal, social and professional associate of the firm and its partners.”

The letter is the latest sign of scrutiny over ties between one of Wall Street’s biggest and most powerful financial groups and a convicted sex offender.

Those ties have plagued Apollo for years and forced co-founder Leon Black to step down as CEO in 2021 after a report by the law firm Dechert found he had paid $158mn to Epstein over a five-year period ending in 2017. Dechert said the payments were for advice on trust and estate planning, tax, artwork, philanthropy, Black’s yacht and plane and the operation of Black’s family office.

Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of trafficking minors for sex.

The teachers’ unions said two documents Apollo filed with the SEC in January 2021 — a letter from then CEO Black to the group’s limited partners and the Dechert report that investigated Apollo’s ties to Epstein — were “deficient” because, taken together, they inaccurately described the extent of the group’s ties with the paedophile.

The Dechert report “takes pains to minimise Epstein’s ties with other Apollo executives”, they said.

The SEC declined to comment. Dechert did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Apollo said: “Neither Marc Rowan nor anyone else at Apollo (excluding Leon Black) had either a business or personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, as was confirmed by an independent, transparent and thorough investigation in 2021. There is nothing new here.”

The group added that while Epstein “sought to do work with the Apollo co- founders other than Mr Black, it was declined at every turn”.

AFT said its members have $27.5bn in total capital commitments to Apollo funds through their pensions. Both unions can influence decision-making at teachers’ pension funds across the US because their members sit on the funds’ boards. Apollo had more than $900bn in assets under management at the end of 2025.

Files released by the justice department showed Rowan repeatedly corresponded with Epstein.

Other executives who corresponded with Epstein include then chief legal officer John Suydam, European head Sanjay Patel, partner Gernot Lohr and Imran Siddiqui, an architect of its Athene insurance unit who later left the firm.

The 2021 Dechert report — produced after Apollo’s board hired the firm to examine Black’s ties to Epstein — found Apollo’s statements about its ties with Epstein had not been “false or misleading”.

However, it added: “It is clear that the facts informing what it means to ‘do business with’ or have a ‘relationship with’ are perhaps more nuanced than might appear at first glance.”