At Financial Trust, a company with fewer than a dozen employees, investment expenses varied widely, from $1.3 million in 2000 to $16 million in 2004 to $42 million in 2005. In 2006 — the year Mr. Epstein was charged in Florida — Financial Trust pushed $117 million into an unnamed subsidiary whose purpose was undisclosed. The subsidiary was apparently transferred to Southern Trust in 2013, and by the end of 2017 the subsidiary accounted for more than half of the company’s $391 million in assets. The filings also disclose that Southern Trust received a $30.5 million loan that same year, but don’t say who provided it.

One thing the financial statements make clear: Mr. Epstein paid himself handsomely. He pocketed $400 million in dividends and other payments from the companies starting in 1999 — the first full year after he moved his operations to the Virgin Islands from New York.

The opacity of Mr. Epstein’s financial dealings has been a perplexing issue since he was arrested in July on federal charges of sex trafficking with underage girls. Although the criminal case against him closed after he committed suicide in federal custody in August, Mr. Epstein’s finances remain an important matter for women who are suing his estate claiming they were among his victims.

Two days before he killed himself, Mr. Epstein signed a will that placed his estate — estimated in court records at more than $500 million — into a trust, potentially an attempt to shield it from public scrutiny. The will lists Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn, two longtime associates, as executors.