The US House of Representatives has unanimously moved to hold Leon Black, the billionaire financier and one of the world’s top collectors, in criminal contempt of Congress, the New York Times reports.

The contempt charge is related to Black’s dealings with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whom Black had paid $158 million for financial advice between 2012 and 2017. The House Oversight Committee, which had also unanimously recommended the contempt charge to the full House, subpoenaed Black this past June, and he met with the committee in a closed-door interview on June 26.

However, Black has not submitted to a deposition and “refused to answer questions about nondisclosure agreements that he had signed with women, some of whom had been linked to Mr. Epstein,” according to the Times. The Washington Post added that he left the interview when the NDAs were brought up. He has also not handed over documents requested by the committee, which include any signed NDAs.

Black sued the committee earlier this month as a way to block the subpoenas. The suit, which is currently pending in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., says that the subpoenas are “invalid” and “exceed” the committee’s delegated authority in seeking private information that bears no legitimate connection to [its] legislative purpose,” according to CNBC.

“Mr. Black is hiding behind litigation to delay having to provide answers to the American people,” Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the oversight committee, said on Tuesday. “No one is above the law. Mr. Black will be treated the same as anyone else in this investigation, and his actions have consequences.”

Black has also called for an investigation of Comer, saying that the representative’s “actions and his statements continue to prove that he is no longer interested in finding the truth about Epstein,” according to the Post.

By holding Black in contempt, the House, which did not officially record the vote, has essentially provided a recommendation to the Justice Department that it bring federal charges against Black.

“The US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia will review the referral of Mr. Black carefully and will not hesitate to pursue additional cases where the evidence supports,” a Justice Department spokesperson told MS NOW.

Black’s attorneys Susan Estrich and Aaron Cutler called the contempt charge “politically motivated and completely retaliatory,” in a statement to the Times. In the Post, Estrich characterized it as a “complete abomination.”

As a collector, Black is known to spend millions on art, dropping eight or nine figures for a single work, from $106 million on a Picasso sculpture to $50 million apiece for two Raphael drawings to nearly $120 million for Edvard Munch’s famous pastel The Scream.

Black first met Epstein in 1996 and soon appointed Epstein to serve as a trustee for Black’s family foundation. In addition to the money that Black would give Epstein, Epstein also managed trusts that would be involved in Black’s art deals, William D. Cohan reports in his just published book Money to Burn. They involved the sale of a Giacometti sculpture for $25 million and the purchase of a Cézanne painting for $30 million.

Epstein pleaded guilty to charges of solicitation of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution with a minor in 2008 and served less than 13 months of his 18-month sentence. Black has repeatedly denied that he knew about Epstein’s now well-documented sexual abuse of minors and young women, which spanned decades. Epstein was charged in 2019 for sex trafficking of minors, which is when his ties to Black first became public. (Epstein died in 2019 in federal custody; his death was ruled a suicide.)

In 2021, Black left Apollo Global Management, the asset management firm he had founded and for which he served as chief executive. That year, a 22-page report by Andrew Levander detailing Black’s relationship with Epstein was released, which Black has said was “totally exonerating” and that cleared him of wrongdoing. In the fallout, he did not seek reelection as chairman of the board of trustees of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, though he remains a board member to this day.