WASHINGTON, DC – SEPTEMBER 22: JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon testifies throughout a Senate Banking, Housing, and City Affairs Committee listening to on Capitol Hill September 22, 2022 in Washington, DC. The committee held the listening to for annual oversight of the nation’s largest banks. (Photograph by Drew Angerer/Getty Photographs)
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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in an interview Thursday stated he was “so unhappy” the financial institution had any enterprise relationship with Jeffrey Epstein â however denied the agency is legally accountable for the lifeless predator’s sex trafficking.
Dimon additionally stated, within the televised interview with Bloomberg, that if JPMorgan had identified all the pieces that has develop into public in recent times about its former customer Epstein “we might have carried out issues in a different way.”
Dimon is scheduled to provide a deposition starting Might 26 for civil lawsuits filed in Manhattan federal court by the federal government of the U.S. Virgin Islands and an Epstein sex abuse accuser. The fits accuse JPMorgan of enabling and benefiting from Epstein’s intercourse trafficking, which included sending younger girls to the Virgin Islands to be abused by him and others at his non-public island there.
Courtroom filings this week present intimately that for years workers of JPMorgan shared with one another considerations about having Epstein as a consumer â effectively earlier than the financial institution terminated its relationship with him.
“I’m so unhappy that we had any relationship to that man in any way,” Dimon informed Bloomberg on Thursday.
“You already know, we had prime attorneys evaluating, from the [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] enforcement, the [Department of Justice], you understand, and clearly, had we identified then what we all know right now, we might have carried out issues in a different way.”
“However it’s very unlucky, and I’ve deep respect for these girls,” Dimon stated.
“That does not imply we’re accountable for the motion of a person, however I do have deep respect for them, my coronary heart goes out to them,” he stated.
Epstein, who was a consumer of the financial institution starting in 1998 and saved tens of millions of {dollars} on deposit, pleaded responsible in 2008 to a Florida state cost of soliciting intercourse from an underage lady. He was sentenced to 13 months in jail.
Regardless of that conviction, Epstein remained a buyer of JPMorgan till 2013.
A mugshot of Jeffrey Epstein launched by the U.S. Justice Division.
Supply: U.S. Justice Division
JPMorgan lately has tried to shift obligation for its relationship with Epstein to Jes Staley, the previous chief of funding banking on the agency, who had shut contact with Epstein through the years when he was a buyer.
However at a court docket listening to in March, a lawyer for the Virgin Islands, informed Decide Jed Rakoff that “Jamie Dimon knew in 2008 that his billionaire consumer was a sex trafficker.”
“If Staley is a rogue worker, why is not Jamie Dimon?” the lawyer, Mimi Liu, stated at that listening to.
“Staley knew, Dimon knew, JPMorgan Chase knew” about Epstein’s prison conduct, Liu stated. “They broke each rule to facilitate his intercourse trafficking in alternate for Epstein’s wealth, connections and referrals.”
Liu stated the financial institution ought to have flagged as suspicious money transactions and wire transfers by Epstein, which included sending lots of of 1000’s of {dollars} to a number of girls.
A lawyer for JPMorgan at that listening to denied that Dimon had any “particular information” about Epstein, and a financial institution spokeswoman has stated “Jamie Dimon has no recollection of reviewing the Epstein accounts.”
Epstein killed himself in a New York jail in August 2019, a month after being arrested on federal little one intercourse trafficking prices.
Since then, various former pals and associates of Epstein, amongst them Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew, have been criticized for his or her relationships with the predator.
Staley stepped down as CEO of Barclays in November 2021 due to his ties to Epstein.
A Nov. 2, 2006, e-mail made public this week in court docket filings for one of many lawsuits in opposition to JPMorgan highlights the priority a prime financial institution official had about Epstein.
The e-mail was despatched from Ann Borowiec, then-head of investor relations for JPMorgan, to Staley, who was then CEO of JPMorgan’s asset administration division. The message’s topic line is: “Epstein- please name me.”
Borowiec started the message by asking Staley, who was on a airplane to Hong Kong, to name her when he may concerning an upcoming assembly her staff was scheduled to have, apparently with Epstein.
“Additionally, having carried out just a little due diligence I’ve considerations on threat mgt with this consumer,” she wrote. “We’ve got a foul observe file internally on threat. … as you understand. Is Jeffrey going to remain concerned right here? How are we managing threat right here. Please name. Thx Ann.”
In January 2011, a number of years after Epstein pleaded responsible to the Florida state case and develop into a registered intercourse offender, a JPMorgan government director named Maryanne Ryan, who was a compliance supervisor, wrote an e-mail to Philip DeLuca, the financial institution’s compliance director, noting a “fast response assembly on Epstein, the sleazy PB [private banking] consumer.”
DeLuca replied, “That is the man who likes younger ladies, appropriate? Hope they don’t cave!!”
A June 2013 e-mail chain between Ryan and DeLuca incorporates an attachment that detailed elements of the financial institution’s relationship with Epstein “which was beforehand escalated to the PB reputational threat committee.”
The e-mail notes that in July 2008, PB Threat “referred Jeffrey Epstein to AML [Anti-Money Laundering] Investigations for extreme money exercise.”
“Equally, in the course of the course of the transaction exercise evaluation, an open supply evaluation of media experiences yielded a number of detrimental media articles alleging connections between Jeffrey Epstein and the prostitution/underage intercourse commerce.”
The copied part of the e-mail goes on to say that AML investigations and PB Threat held discussions that “reconfirmed” they’d documented Epstein’s detrimental background and “marked him excessive threat.” The part notes that in October 2010 AML Investigations “escalated information tales indicating renewed regulation enforcement curiosity in Epstein and requested a Speedy Response name.”
An e-mail chain with DeLuca on it exhibits a Speedy Response Name was held in January 2011, after which Epstein was once more retained as a consumer, however an settlement was made that “Catherine Keating and William Langford clarify to Jes Staley how the existence of the Epstein relationship may undermine the Human Trafficking Undertaking presently underway inside AML investigations.”
That anti-money laundering undertaking was spearheaded by Langford, who previous to becoming a member of JPMorgan in 2006 was a regulatory coverage official on the Treasury Division’s Monetary Crimes Enforcement Community (FinCEN).
“Langford talked about that he briefed Steven Cutler on the potential press and optics associated to sustaining the Epstein relationship whereas on the similar time spearheading the Human Trafficking effort inside AML,” the e-mail states.
“No change in retention,” the e-mail concludes.