Private Equity Billionaires Like Leon Black Exploit Companies While Living in Obscene Luxury
Source: Freddy Brewster. "The Epstein Files Are the Horror That Keeps on Giving." February 27, 2026. jacobin.com
The Gist
The author argues that billionaire Leon Black represents everything wrong with private equity - his firm allegedly ruins companies and hospitals while he spends over a billion dollars on parties, art, and luxury items. This shows how the ultra-rich get richer by harming regular people and businesses.
Conclusion
Private equity moguls like Leon Black represent a system where billionaires extract wealth by allegedly exploiting companies, workers, and investors, then spend that wealth on extravagant personal luxuries while the businesses they control harm patients, workers, and communities
Premises
- Leon Black spent over $1.2 billion on personal expenses in five years, including $115 million on art in 2011 alone and a $3 million birthday party
- Apollo Global Management, Black's firm, has been accused of stripping companies, misleading customers about fees, and delivering questionable returns to investors
- Apollo owns 220 mostly rural hospitals that provide poor quality care with longer wait times and insufficient staffing while generating millions in profits for the firm
- Black used tax avoidance strategies like the 'buy, borrow, die' scheme and benefited from the carried-interest loophole to amass wealth while avoiding taxes
- Black's close relationship with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, including paying him $158 million for advice, demonstrates the corrupt networks among the ultra-wealthy
Assumptions
- Private equity firms' business practices are inherently exploitative rather than value-creating
- Extreme wealth inequality is morally problematic, especially when contrasted with harm to ordinary people
- The wealthy have a moral obligation to ensure their business practices don't harm workers, patients, and communities
- Association with Jeffrey Epstein indicates broader moral corruption
- Current tax policies unfairly benefit the ultra-wealthy at society's expense