The CEO of a global alternative investment manager which reported $414B of assets under management at the end of last June, Apollo Global Management, decided to call it quits and disappear into obscurity after his connection to pedophile pervert Jeffrey Epstein came to light.
Apollo CEO goes down fast
Apollo Global Management announced Monday that their CEO and chairman, Leon Black, is “stepping down effective immediately.”
The move was expected, but not this soon. When Apollo found out near the end of January that Black “paid $158 million” to Jeffrey Epstein from 2012 to 2017, they issued a statement promising he would step down following an independent investigation” into the relationship.
They expected Black to “step down as CEO on or before July 31.” They also were planning on him sticking around as chairman.
Instead, there was a sudden change of plans and “Black is now handing over the role of chairman to Jay Clayton, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman.” Clayton is a new addition to the Apollo board. He “recently became an independent director at the company.”
The job of CEO is going to company co-founder Marc Rowan. He’ll manage their portfolio of investments including ADT, CareerBuilder, Cox Media Group, Intrado, Rackspace, Redbox, Shutterfly, Smart & Final, and University of Phoenix. Even though the investigation didn’t turn up any hard evidence to link Black to child rape, the $158 million paid to Epstein doesn’t look good.
As the review by the law firm Dechert found, it was officially for a “variety of issues related to trust and estate planning, tax, philanthropy, and the operation of the Family Office.” Others say it looks like it could be blackmail payments.
Step back and focus on family
In an attempt to distance himself from Epstein and his harem of underage sex-slaves, the former CEO is keeping an eye on his own kids. It’s time, he insists, to “step back and focus on my family, my wife Debra’s and my health issues, and my many other interests.”
He wants to keep his personal stain off of the company. “Over the past 30-plus years, my co-founders, Marc, Josh Harris and I, have worked extremely hard to make Apollo a franchise built for enduring success.”
Black was pleased to hear that the investigation report concluded that “neither Black nor Apollo was involved in any of Epstein’s criminal activity.”
It also stated that there was also “no evidence that Epstein ever introduced Black, or offered to introduce Black, to any underage woman.” There must be something lurking around in the shadows though or the former CEO would have kept his seat as chairman of the board.
There is a blizzard of unsupported speculation whirling around that there is a huge reason Epstein, and his partner in pedophilia Ghislaine Maxwell, made a point to hang around with powerful global CEO types and politicians.
It was to build a blackmail file and exert influence on their corporate and political decisions. Maxwell’s publishing magnate daddy was an alleged triple agent who came to a suspicious end on a yacht named for his favorite daughter, the Lady Ghislaine. It’s more than possible that when she was young, he used her as bait in a “badger game” and she learned to like it enough to run one of her own.
