With the release of the Epstein files seven months behind us, many of the leads into the convicted sex offenders’s connections to the rich and powerful have gone cold — except for those involving Leon Black. The billionaire co-founder of the private-equity giant Apollo Global Management is being hounded by Congress over his suspiciously generous $158 million payment to Jeffrey Epstein for tax purposes. And the 75-year-old is fighting back. Last week, Black ignored a House Oversight subpoena and filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming the subpoena has “no legitimate connection” to the committee’s legislative goals.

This week, banker turned financial journalist William D. Cohan has a new book on Black called Money to Burn, tracing his rise from the ashes of Drexel Burnham Lambert to his fall after Epstein’s death. It is an enormous study of a major figure on Wall Street that goes beyond recent headlines; the Epstein saga is first treated on page 426. Cohan tracks the ways that Black’s career defined the rise of private equity in America and how he was defined by the men in his life ranging from complicated to nefarious: his father, Michael Milken, and Epstein. The day after Black sued the House, I spoke with Cohan about Black’s Epstein ties, his designs to rehab his image thanks to his world-class art collection, and whether or not a billionaire who has never been charged with a crime can ever be held accountable.

In the book, discussing the saga of Apollo’s Twinkies acquisition, Leon Black says, “Normally I don’t talk to reporters.” So why did he sit for this book?That’s a question my wife always wants to know the answer to. I started by interviewing Marc Rowan, who I’ve known for 30 years since I was a banker. Next thing, I got a call from Leon saying, “Don’t you want to interview me?” The answer was, “Yes, of course.” I was going to seek him out, but he beat me to the punch. I don’t know whether it was the combination of things I’ve written over the years and my own nearly 20-years experience on Wall Street. That makes it seem like, Okay, I’m a guy who at least understands the industry and the players and can put it in perspective. I think he felt like this was his opportunity to say his piece. And he was on the record throughout. So I give him credit for that.

You wrote that you were “incredulous that he would have such a loosey-goosey fee arrangement with Epstein.” Do you think that Epstein is just the Michael Jordan of tax-structuring advice? When the Dechert report came out, I wrote a piece in Vanity Fair about how I just didn’t believe that he could pay $158 million for tax and estate advice that you could get for $5 million from Paul, Weiss. We talked about how I was incredulous. I still find it all a little bit hard to believe, but I never really found anything to refute it — and neither has anybody else.

Jeffrey Epstein was some sort of Svengali who managed to surround himself, or take advantage of, or find the weakness of any number of very powerful people. Leon told me that Epstein introduced him to Bill Gates, who came to his office and spoke about philanthropy for two........

© Daily Intelligencer