Since last winter, JP Morgan has faced mounting questions in connection with legal action undertaken by a prosecutor who alleged in a lawsuit that the company facilitated the sex trafficking network of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Former JP Morgan executive Jes Staley was named by a U.S. Virgin Islands district attorney as a party who played an intimate role in having Epstein’s relationship with the bank preserved.
In March, the company sought legal action against Staley, seeking to distance itself from him while arguing that the lawsuits against the company are misplaced. The company said in a formal statement it “could not have imagined any of our employees would engage in the type of conduct alleged.”
Now, a new report from the Wall Street Journal exposes non-public court documents in which Staley says he communicated for years with JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon about the bank’s business with Epstein. The documents are part of the discovery process in legal wrangling over the bank’s connections to Epstein, WSJ said.
According to the documents, Staley says he communicated with Dimon when Epstein was arrested in 2006 and 2008, as well as on various other occasions, about whether to keep Epstein as a client. Those conversations occurred through 2012, Staley said.
Dimon, who was deposed last Friday, says he has no recollection of discussing or reviewing Epstein’s accounts, according to the company.
“There is no evidence that any such communications ever occurred—nothing in the voluminous number of documents reviewed and nothing in the nearly dozen depositions taken, including that of our own CEO,” a JP Morgan spokeswoman told WSJ. “The one person who claims this to be true is currently accused of horrific acts and dishonesty.”
Staley’s comments arose as part of two lawsuits against the bank — one from U.S. Virgin Islands prosecutors and the other from an unnamed woman who claims she was an Epstein victim.
Virgin Islands authorities stated the following in their legal filing:
JP Morgan and its employees had actual knowledge that they were facilitating Epstein’s sexual abuse and sex-trafficking conspiracy to recruit, entice, harbor, transport, provide, obtain, and maintain young women and underage girls to engage in commercial sex acts through the means of force, threats of force, fraud, abuse of process, and coercion.
Despite this knowledge, JP Morgan intentionally paid for, concealed, facilitated and participated in Epstein’s and his co-conspirators’ violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1591(a), which JP Morgan knew and was in reckless disregard of the fact that Epstein and his co-conspirators would use its bank accounts and financial transactions to coerce, defraud, and force young women and underage girls to engage in commercial sex acts.
JP Morgan, through its employees and agents and their role in facilitating the financial aspect of Epstein’s enterprise, actively facilitated or participated in the sex-trafficking conspiracy in which Epstein and his co-conspirators led young women and underage girls in the Virgin Islands and elsewhere to believe that they would be rewarded if they cooperated with Epstein and his co-conspirators and acquiesced to their demands.
In its lawsuit against Staley, JP Morgan blamed Staley for maintaining the relationship, arguing that he misled the bank about Epstein.
A lawyer representing the woman who sued the bank told WSJ he is seeking to have Dimon’s deposition unsealed. “Rather than mislead anyone about what was or was not said, why don’t they just agree to release the whole transcript?” he said.
The court documents show Epstein had one meeting scheduled with both Dimon and Staley during the spring of 2010. But, the bank says the meeting was not on Dimon’s calendar and that he did not attend.
