Money to Burn: The Unvarnished Truth about Leon Black, Apollo, and the Rise of New Wall Street. Talking with author William D. Cohan.

Let's come back to that number again, $158 million.

Now, he had told you that, I guess, to put it in perspective, I mean, this is an individual who has a $15 billion net worth.

He, as we know, he has a museum-quality art collection.

And he referenced—

Probably worth around $5 billion.

Yes.

Yes, and he referenced the acquisition of two Raphael drawings, each of which were $50 million.

Each.

Each, which he happily paid for to acquire them.

Again, just from his perspective, if it was something that he really wanted, as in the case of these Raphael drawings— 50 million.

For the screen, for which he paid $130 million for.

Yeah.

So, you know, we look at that and we say to ourselves – and then, you know, again, coming back to the grant of shares to his – to both Mark and to – Josh.

To Josh.

Again, there are examples here of, on the one hand, a very savvy businessman, but on the other hand, who – on occasion will go ahead and make a decision and is not overly – is not worried about the dollar amount because again, viewed from the perspective of somebody who's worth $15 billion, this is an amount which is – it's not to justify – any relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

But from the point of view of the money that was saved, the tax liability that was saved as a result of that grant revision by Jeffrey Epstein, arguably, perhaps that was behind Leon's thinking.

Who knows? But I could understand that to a certain extent.

Well, I think for a long period, Leon was quite taken with Jeffrey Epstein.

And again, this we can stipulate that we're not sure.

I mean, there's no evidence yet of a nefarious, potential nefarious relationship he might have had with him.

But just talking about the financial relationship, I mean, and the personal relationship, on the one hand, epstein uh solved the scrap problem for him and it's not been uh overturned yes okay and he also introduced him to what leon thought were all these interesting people like bill gates like for instance he told me that that uh you know no one but jeffrey was the person who introduced him to bill gates and bill gates came over and and sat with him for two hours and they talked about all sorts of things including philanthropy so i mean not that he couldn't have gotten the Phil Gates on his own if he tried hard enough but this was a guy who said do you want to meet him and I know him and I'll introduce you to him and in fact bring him to your office and so no one else was doing that for him and I think Like many people who got into this guy's orbit, you know, they were sort of taken by this guy's relationships and all the people he seemed to know.

Yes.

Well,

you know, it's interesting how – when is enough enough? I mean, on the one hand, he brought in a law firm.

And as you said, of the high-profile people who've been – who were associated with Jeffrey Epstein, Leon Black is the only one who's actually done that.