Filing alleges JPMorgan reimbursed Jess Staley for visits to meet Jeffrey Epstein

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JPMorgan Chase reimbursed former executive Jess Staley for trips she made to meet with Jeffrey Epstein, according to charges in a New York court filing, shedding further light on the US banking giant’s entanglements with the late sex offender.

The filing said Staley, who is accused of witnessing and participating in Epstein’s sex crimes, also testified under oath that she told JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon about the financier’s misdeeds in 2006.

Dimon has, as of 2019, denied “knowing anything” about Epstein or his bank account. JPMorgan is suing Staley, claiming he misled the bank by vouching for the late sex offender internally.

JPMorgan last month agreed to a $290 million settlement with those accusing Epstein over its dealings with the disgraced financier. It is still facing a separate trial from the US Virgin Islands, where Epstein was home, with a hearing currently set for October.

Staley, who later became chief executive of Barclays, was Epstein’s personal banker for a time, and made several visits to his homes in Manhattan, Florida, and Little St. James Island.

In documents filed Monday by the USVI, Territory said: “Staley submitted, and JP Morgan reimbursed for, costs associated with expense reports reflecting the alleged meetings with Epstein.” It separately claimed that Staley and Epstein met at several of Epstein’s properties.

The filings detail the most detailed to date the scope of JPMorgan’s dealings with Epstein, until he was let go as a client in 2013, alleging the bank maintained accounts for his victims and allowed him to withdraw $5 million in cash and send $3 million to women and girls over a decade.

They cite communications between JPMorgan employees that refer to an account opened in 2004 for one of his alleged victims as a “favor” for Epstein, in which JPMorgan did not have verified details such as the woman’s date of birth or met her in person.

According to messages cited in the filing, bank employees justified opening the account by saying that “Jeffrey Epstein knew the model personally” and that “Jeffrey Epstein often provided assistance to aspiring models”.

An account and credit card was opened by the bank for a woman brought to the US as a teenager and described in news reports as Epstein’s “Yugoslavian sex slave”. The bank reportedly processed payments totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars to the woman, even after she was identified as a sex trafficking victim in media reports.

JPMorgan, which has expressed regret for banking Epstein but admitted no liability, did not comment on the latest filing. In its own filing with the court on Monday, it accused the USVI of enabling Epstein’s crimes and promised to fully refute the field’s claims at trial.

“Instead of being responsible for its failures to investigate and monitor this criminal under its jurisdiction. , , USVI blames a third party bank that did not have USVI authority to enforce any law, nor did USVI have information about Epstein’s crimes in USVI’s territory,” the bank said.

Epstein was arrested in Florida in 2006 for soliciting a minor for prostitution, a fact known to various JPMorgan employees. By that time, the lender had put “all the girls and women publicly alleged to have been recruiters, accomplices or victims of the financier into the bank . . . USVI filings allege, including Ghislaine Maxwell, to whom the bank transferred a total of more than $25 million.”

Maxwell, a former Epstein aide, was convicted last year of aiding his abuse and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

In a meeting shortly after Epstein’s 2006 arrest, JPMorgan’s compliance team acknowledged that he “was known to pay cash for his massages” and that “the matter is minor,” the filing said.

In its filing, the USVI said, “JPMorgan had access to virtually every financial detail of Epstein’s enterprise – from payments to young women in Lithuania and Russia, transfers by Maxwell to the purchase of a helicopter, to ‘revoked’ credit cards for an alleged recruiter who spoke to police – in real time and nearly all of it, and thus kept his major role secret, until Epstein was dead and gone.”

The USVI alleged that Epstein’s conduct was widely discussed within JP Morgan and at times ridiculed. A bank official in an email cited by the USVI compared another customer’s home to Epstein’s home, “except it was more tasteful, and fewer nymphets”.

The USVI said Epstein was a major client of JPMorgan – reportedly the largest revenue generator at the private bank in 2003 – and sent a roster of other wealthy individuals to JPMorgan. These reportedly included Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Google itself.

The filing alleges that JPMorgan’s relationship with Brin was worth more than $4 billion in 2014, making him one of the private bank’s most important clients. Representatives for Brin and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The nature of Staley’s relationship with Epstein and his visits to the financier’s private island in the USVI has attracted considerable scrutiny after Staley released emails from his JP Morgan account, where he described being “in a hot tub with a glass of white wine”. Staley has strongly denied involvement in Epstein’s sex crimes.

Epstein died in New York in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking. His death was termed as suicide.