A former top JPMorgan Chase executive said in legal documents that for years he communicated with Chief Executive Jamie Dimon about the bank’s business with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—setting the stage for a conflict with his former boss, who maintains he had no such conversations.
Jes Staley’s statements, made in documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal that haven’t been made public, are his first remarks to emerge about conversations between him and Dimon regarding Epstein. The bank on Tuesday said Staley’s statements are false.
The documents are part of the discovery process for a legal fight over JPMorgan’s connections to Epstein.
In the documents, Staley said that Dimon communicated with him when Epstein was arrested in 2006 and in 2008 when Epstein pleaded guilty. Staley also said that Dimon communicated with him various times about whether to maintain Epstein as a client through 2012.
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Epstein was accused of sexually abusing girls in 2006 and pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution. He subsequently spent time in a Florida jail and registered as a sex offender.
Dimon was deposed Friday. The CEO maintained he has no recollection of ever discussing or reviewing Epstein’s accounts, a JPMorgan spokeswoman said. Dimon doesn’t believe such conversations with Staley ever happened, the spokeswoman added.
“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,” said the spokeswoman. “The one person who claims this to be true is currently accused of horrific acts and dishonesty.”
A lawyer for Staley, who left JPMorgan in 2013, declined to comment.
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The statements arose as part of a pair of lawsuits against the bank in a federal court in Manhattan. The government of the U.S. Virgin Islands and an unnamed woman, who said she was abused by Epstein, sued JPMorgan last year, claiming that the bank facilitated Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking.
The bank has sought to pin the bulk of the relationship on Staley and sued him claiming he misled executives about Epstein. The bank in its lawsuit identified Staley as the “powerful financial executive” accused of sexual assault by the woman who is suing JPMorgan. Staley’s lawyers have said the allegations against him are baseless.
Brad Edwards, a lawyer representing the woman, said 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?” Edwards said.
Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges. He died in jail later that year while awaiting trial.
JPMorgan has said that the lawsuits have no merit and that it didn’t know about Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking before he was arrested in 2019. Staley has denied he knew about Epstein’s alleged trafficking and said he regrets his friendship with Epstein.
Epstein became a JPMorgan client around 1998, and, over the years, the bank came to manage dozens of Epstein-related accounts containing hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the lawsuits.
Epstein formed a close bond with Staley, who ran the private bank that catered to the firm’s wealthiest clients and later oversaw its investment bank, according to the lawsuits.
In August 2008, a few weeks after Epstein’s guilty plea, a JPMorgan employee sent an email that suggested Dimon would review the Epstein relationship, according to the U.S. Virgin Islands lawsuit. The email states, “I would count Epstein’s assets as a probable outflow for ’08 ($120mm or so?) as I can’t imagine it will stay (pending Dimon review).”
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The bank has said that there is no record of such a review and that Dimon doesn’t recall one.
Epstein had one meeting scheduled with both Dimon and Staley, on March 2, 2010, according to documents viewed by the Journal. The JPMorgan spokeswoman said that the meeting wasn’t on Dimon’s calendar and that Dimon didn’t attend.
Epstein remained a client of JPMorgan after his guilty plea, and top executives continued to meet with Epstein as JPMorgan’s compliance department pressured the bank to drop Epstein, the Journal has reported. JPMorgan has said it cut off Epstein’s accounts in 2013, shortly after Staley left the bank.
