Share and Follow
Shareholders of Apollo Global Management have initiated a class action lawsuit against the company’s billionaire co-founders, Leon Black and Marc Rowan, citing their alleged links to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Documents submitted to a New York court on Monday, March 2, and reviewed by In Touch, accuse the shareholders of asserting that “Epstein had significant involvement and frequent communication with the senior leadership of Apollo Global during the 2010s,” and claim that Black and Rowan misrepresented these connections in regulatory disclosures in 2021 and 2022.
The shareholders’ allegations follow the Department of Justice’s release on January 30 of a series of documents related to Epstein, which unveiled communications between Rowan and Black and Epstein from 2013 to 2016—after Epstein had been convicted and jailed for soliciting a minor for prostitution.
The emails detail Epstein’s interest in acquiring Rowan’s private jet and illustrate discussions on various financial topics and professional networking. They also reveal plans for numerous meetings at Epstein’s Manhattan residence, involving Black and other investors.
In 2021, Black resigned as CEO and Chairman after an independent investigation revealed he had paid Epstein $158 million from 2012 to 2017 for financial advice. Nonetheless, the complaint states that Black “remained a control person, holding 7.0 percent of Apollo Global’s common stock as of April 25, 2025.” Black has denied any misconduct, claiming ignorance of Epstein’s criminal actions.
Multiple media outlets reported about the newly unearthed communications in February, the complaint notes, and two powerful teachers’ unions sent a letter to the SEC enforcement director calling for an investigation into “Apollo’s seeming inability to be forthcoming about the extent to which Jeffrey was a personal, social and professional associate of the firm and its partners.”
The reports caused share prices to plunge by the end of February, the complaint alleges.
“As a result of Defendants’ wrongful acts and omissions and the precipitous decline in the market value of the Company’s common shares,” the complaint reads, “Plaintiff and the other Class members have suffered significant losses and damages.”
“Neither Marc Rowan nor anyone else at Apollo (excluding Leon Black) had either a business or personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein,” Apollo president James C. Zelter insisted in a February 18 press release.
However, in a Tuesday, March 3 interview with Bloomberg, Rowan said that he dealt with Epstein in his capacity as a tax advisor for Black. “I didn’t like him for my own reasons, he wasted my time,” the chair of the Wharton School’s board of advisors said. “Even from the grave, he’s wasting my time.”
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while behind bars awaiting his trial for sex trafficking.