Leon Black

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Leon Black paid $119.9 million in May 2012 for a pastel by Edvard Munch, one of the four versions of The Scream. At that moment, no work of art had ever sold for a higher price. The buyer was an American private equity investor, born on the 31st of July 1951. He had spent decades in the quieter corners of finance, among buyouts and distressed debt. In 2021, within a few months, he left both the firm he co-founded and the museum he had led. How does a financier reach that point, and what did he build on the way? Who was Jeffrey Epstein to him, and what did the money between them buy? And when accusers and courts entered the story, who was believed?

  34352320

• 2. From Drexel to Apollo

  ›

  Eli M. Black was born Blachowitz in Poland and emigrated as a child. He rose to chair, and later majority own, the United Brands Company. In 1975 he died by suicide at the age of 53. That was the same year his son Leon earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. Leon's mother, Shirley Lubell, was an artist and the sister of Tulsa oil executive Benedict I. Lubell. Leon had already taken a degree in philosophy and history from Dartmouth College in 1973.

  Peat Marwick, a firm that later became KPMG, gave Black his first job, as an accountant. He also worked at the publisher Boardroom Reports. Lehman Brothers interviewed him and told him he lacked the brains or the personality for Wall Street. He proved that verdict wrong at another bank.

  From 1977 to 1990, Black worked at Drexel Burnham Lambert. He rose to managing director, head of the Mergers and Acquisitions Group and co-head of the Corporate Finance Department. Colleagues regarded him as the right-hand man of Michael Milken, the so-called junk bond king.

  In 1990, Drexel Burnham Lambert filed for bankruptcy, and Black's employer vanished. That year he co-founded Apollo Global Management with Marc Rowan, Josh Harris and Antony Ressler. The firm specialized in leveraged buyouts and distressed securities. It went public in 2011. By March 2026 it managed roughly $1.03 trillion in assets, making it one of the largest private equity firms in the world.

  Apollo's growth did not come without costly disputes. In 2009, Black contributed $60 million to a settlement with Huntsman Corporation. Apollo had been sued for backing out of a merger the year before.

  His wealth still rests mostly on Apollo. In February 2024, he sold shares for the first time since founding the firm. The sale was worth about $172.8 million, roughly 2 percent of his holding. Documents released through the Justice Department's Epstein investigation also included a 2014-2015 summary of his personal balance sheet. It showed his assets, debts and liquidity when his net worth stood near $5 billion. Bloomberg's index put that figure at about $13.8 billion in 2026.

  101211941

• 3. Trophies and Disputes

  ›

  The Museum of Modern Art announced in September 2012 that it would exhibit Black's Scream for six months, starting that October. A private purchase had become a public spectacle within a few months.

  In 2012 he also acquired Phaidon Press, a publisher of fine art books. Then in June 2013, news broke that he had bought Head of a Young Apostle, a small work by Raphael. He paid 29 million pounds after a bidding war among four parties.

  On the 22nd of December 2015, reports said Black had bought a complete Daniel Bomberg Babylonian Talmud at auction for $9.3 million. Sotheby's described the sale in a press release as a new world auction record for any piece of Judaica.

  A Picasso sculpture, Bust of a Woman (Marie-Thérèse), produced a legal fight in 2016. The advisory firm Pelham Europe, an agent for a member of Qatar's royal family, claimed ownership. So did the gallery owner Larry Gagosian, who had resold the bust to Black. The case was settled by Maya Widmaier-Picasso, the owner of the sculpture. Black kept the bust, and she paid Pelham an undisclosed amount.

  The museum that had shown his Munch soon honored him. In 2018, he was elected chairman of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and his term began on the 1st of July 2018.

  3536383919

• 4. A Poem for Epstein

  ›

  Ghislaine Maxwell compiled a birthday album for Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003. Black contributed a handwritten poem with a rhyme scheme. It included the acronym V.F.P.C., short for Vanity Fair Poster Child, a nod to a magazine profile of Epstein then in the works. Two of its lines read: "Blonde, Red or Brunette, spread out geographically" and "With this net of fish, Jeff's now The Old Man and The Sea." Black signed it "Love and kisses, Leon".

  In 1997, six years before the poem, Black had named Epstein one of the trustees of his Foundation. Epstein's calendar later recorded more than 100 meetings with Black between 2013 and 2017. They were typically held at Epstein's townhouse.

  In 2019, Black described his connection to Epstein as a "limited relationship". A letter to Apollo investors in 2020 gave a fuller account. Epstein, he wrote, had given him "estate planning, tax and philanthropic advice" for his family partnership and related family entities.

  The New York Times reported that Black had paid Epstein at least $50 million for such work from 2012 to 2017. Black did not confirm that sum at the time. He said only that he paid Epstein "millions of dollars annually for his work". He has also said he "deeply regrets" the relationship. In October 2020, he asked Apollo's board for an independent review of it.

  4050495145

• 5. The Dechert Report

  ›

  Apollo's board answered Black's request in October 2020 by hiring the law firm Dechert LLP. The review was released on the 25th of January 2021. It found that Black had paid Epstein about $158 million from 2012 through 2017 for financial services. Using Epstein's tax avoidance strategies, Black had saved at least $1.3 billion in taxes. Black pledged to donate $200 million to women's initiatives.

  He stepped down as CEO in January 2021 and left Apollo entirely in March 2021. Since then, he has managed his personal investments through his family office, Elysium Management, which invests in real estate and private equity. His chairmanship at the Museum of Modern Art ended on the 1st of July 2021. He did not seek re-election after dozens of artists and activists protested his financial ties to Epstein.

  In 2023, Black paid $62.5 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands to be released from claims related to Epstein. In July of that year, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee made public that it was investigating his tax strategies and dealings with Epstein.

  Senator Ron Wyden, who sits on that committee, pressed further in July 2025. He asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate possible tax evasion tied to the payments. He also urged the Justice Department to subpoena records from Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank.

  In March 2026, Wyden revised the total upward. Senate investigators had found an additional $12 million in transfers that the Apollo-commissioned review missed. The true sum was $170 million, not $158 million.

  A 2026 report in the New York Times added a further detail. It said the sum far exceeded what elite law or accounting firms charge for such work. It also reported that Epstein helped Black give money to women, at least $20 million to a dozen of them. Black had sexual relations with some of those women, according to the Times.

  4360616242

• 6. The Ganieva Dispute

  ›

  In March 2021, the Russian model Guzel Ganieva wrote in a series of tweets that Black had sexually harassed and abused her for years, beginning in 2008. She said she had been forced under duress to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Black denied the allegations. He said they had a consensual affair lasting years. He accused her of extortion after paying her millions of dollars under the agreement.

  Ganieva sued, represented by Jeanne Christensen of Wigdor LLP, and Black countersued. She also alleged that Black introduced her to Epstein. She further claimed he tried to force her to have sex with him.

  In May 2023, a judge dismissed her lawsuit. The judge ruled that the NDA "clearly and unambiguously covers all claims arising out of the parties' relationship, past or future". Black called the lawsuit "exceptionally painful".

  Emails unsealed in 2026 added a new layer. They showed that in 2015, Ganieva had demanded $100 million from Black. Epstein helped Black handle the conflict and arranged meetings between the two. She eventually agreed to the NDA. Under it, Black would pay her $100,000 per month for 15 years, totaling $18 million. Those emails placed Epstein inside a dispute that Black's earlier statements had not described.

  7980818487

• 7. Lawsuits and Countersuits

  ›

  Jeanne Christensen filed a second case in 2022 for a client named Cheri Pierson. Pierson accused Black of raping her in 2002 at Epstein's mansion in New York City. Black denied ever having met her, and his attorney called the suit an extortion attempt. Pierson dropped it in February 2024. Black's lawyers described her as a serial litigator with over 35 previous lawsuits, an extensive criminal record and public accusations of harassment, stalking and threats.

  On the 25th of July 2023, Wigdor brought a third lawsuit. It accused Black of violently raping a 16-year-old girl at Epstein's Manhattan townhouse in 2002. The complaint described her as having autism and Down syndrome, with a developmental age of 12. Black denied the allegations and denied ever meeting the plaintiff. He accused Wigdor of manufacturing "defamatory lies, masquerading as allegations".

  Family members later spoke with Black's investigators. They said she had a history of inventing stories and had never been diagnosed with either condition. Her family also said she was never trafficked to Epstein or Black, because she was attending school at the time. The plaintiff later claimed she had served as a "human incubator" for Epstein, bearing children whom Ghislaine Maxwell took soon after birth. Journals said to support the claim were released in the Epstein files.

  In April 2026, a judge determined that the plaintiff had falsified sonogram images in her journals. The same judge sanctioned Christensen in a 76-page ruling for repeatedly lying to the court and to Black's lawyers. Christensen left the case, and the plaintiff, identified as Doe, now represents herself. Black's lawyers have urged authorities to investigate Doe for fraud on the court. They also said Wigdor destroyed and falsified evidence. Wigdor was ordered to pay some of Black's legal fees.

  Black went on offense in August 2023 and sued Wigdor LLP for malicious prosecution. He argued the firm's business model depended on scandalous allegations that could be avoided only through a large settlement, with Wigdor taking a substantial cut. A judge denied Wigdor's request to dismiss the suit in September 2024. In March 2025, an appeals court dismissed it under anti-SLAPP laws, which protect litigation freedoms. In March 2026, Wigdor filed a fourth lawsuit, alleging that Black used strategic lawsuits against public participation against its attorneys and clients.

  A 2022 case pointed in another direction. Black named Josh Harris, his Apollo co-founder, in a civil racketeering lawsuit under the RICO statute. He alleged Harris led a group within Apollo trying to tarnish his reputation after the Epstein ties surfaced. Federal judge Paul Engelmayer dismissed the suit for lack of evidence, and an appeals court upheld that decision in 2023.

  8991929497

• 8. Giving and Home

  ›

  In 2007, Black and his wife, Debra, donated $25 million to form the Melanoma Research Alliance. Debra Black is a melanoma survivor, and both sit on the alliance's board. She is a Broadway producer and a 1976 graduate of Barnard College. Her brother is Antony Ressler, who co-founded Ares Management. The couple have four children. One son, Benjamin, runs an investment fund, and President Donald Trump nominated him to lead the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.

  Dartmouth College has received much of Black's attention. He served on its Board of Trustees from 2002 to 2011 and sits on its President's Leadership Council. He endowed a chair in Shakespeare Studies and a program in Jewish Studies. In 2012, he gave $48 million toward a new visual arts center there.

  His trusteeships span many institutions. They include the Jewish Museum, the Asia Society, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Mount Sinai Hospital, the Cardozo School of Law and the Vail Valley Foundation. Through the Debra and Leon Black Family Foundation, he provided $7.5 million for a fellowship program for U.S. military personnel and veterans at Harvard Kennedy School.

  During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Blacks teamed with Aramark and the Mayor's Fund to launch NYC Healthcare Heroes. They committed $20 million to supply hundreds of thousands of care packages of food, household goods and personal care items. More than 100,000 healthcare workers in New York City received them.

  Black's primary home is in Manhattan, and he keeps a beachfront compound in Southampton, New York. In 2016, he and Debra bought a Beverly Hills estate that had belonged to the actor Tom Cruise, for about $38 million. It sold in March 2026 for roughly $47 million.

  21293010033