Ex-CEO of UK’s Second-Largest Bank in Hot Water as Court Docs Reveal Lies About Epstein Ties
14:30 GMT 08.02.2024 (Updated: 14:41 GMT 08.02.2024)
© AP Photo / Lefteris Pitarakis
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Disgraced late financier, suspected intelligence asset and convicted pedophile and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein returned to the media spotlight last month after a New York court unsealed documents containing the names of some of the powerful politicians, businessmen, and show business stars he cavorted with in the abuse of minors.
Jes Staley, the US-born banker and former CEO of British banking giant Barclays, is facing fresh scrutiny after court documents revealed him to have secretly maintained contacts with Jeffrey Epstein for years after becoming the bank’s boss, and lying about it.
According to the legal documents, which were seen by Bloomberg, Staley and Epstein used an intermediary to communicate long after the former became Barclays CEO in October 2015, contradicting testimony by Staley, and that of a British probe, that the contacts had stopped.
Staley resigned in disgrace from Barclays in November 2021 after being found to have “recklessly” mislead regulators about his relationship with Epstein, a year after the bank’s board steadfastly defended him and assured that he had been “sufficiently transparent” in his commitment to stop communicating with the New York financier, who was found dead in a jail cell in August 2019, a month after his arrest on sex trafficking charges.
Publicly, Staley claimed that he broke off ties and “thought it was not appropriate to deal at all with Epstein” in his role as Barclays’ chief, citing Epstein’s “very, very terrible past.”
But the legal documents, released as part of a lawsuit against US banking giant JPMorgan Chase, revealed that Staley and Epstein used an intermediary “for messages between” them for “several years” after Staley was hired on at Barclays. The intermediary, whose identity has been withheld, reportedly verbally communicated messages from Epstein sent by email in 2016 and 2017 to Staley.
One of the messages, sent in November 2016, was apparently related to an inquiry by Epstein about who the next Treasury chief might be. A second email, sent in February 2017, asked Staley about his opinion about a banker looking to “join rothschild,” presumably referring to Paris-based banking giant Rothschild & Co. “Will do. I will speak with him today and get back to you,” the intermediary promised, later replying “he thinks she is great and is a big fan of hers,” and that the candidate was a “good recommendation for rothschild [sic].”
Court papers further revealed that Staley and Epstein had begun to be more careful about their communications in July 2015, in the months leading up to Staley’s Barclays appointment, with Epstein writing in one exchange asking his interlocutor that it would be “better if you not email me. phone only [sic],” followed up by blank emails by Staley with the lines “call my cell” and “call me.”
A 2015 Daily Mail investigation discovered that Epstein had acted as a lobbyist for Staley, a client of his, “in financial circles” going back to mid-2012, while Barclays was searching for a new CEO. Additional reporting revealed that Epstein had reportedly threatened to blackmail members of Britain’s parliament to pick Staley as the bank’s top officer. Separately, in legal papers leaked in May of 2023, it was revealed that Staley and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon had discussed business with Epstein, despite Dimon’s sworn testimony that he had never been a client of the disgraced financier.
Staley has maintained that his contacts with Epstein were strictly business-related. However, media reports and court documents have subsequently uncovered that he was one of the high-profile guests of Epstein’s infamous private island, Little Saint James, where underage girls are believed to have been sexually abused.
Staley is one of dozens of politicians, bankers, movie stars, singers, and other public figures to have been caught up in the Epstein scandal, with others including former US presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, King Charles, businessmen Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Peter Listerman and Rupert Murdoch, along with singers, actors and journalists including Mick Jagger, Alec Baldwin, Woody Allen, Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos. Their names, and those of dozens of others, were discovered among Epstein’s extensive list of contacts, with some known to have traveled to his private island.
Epstein’s spider’s web of contacts, which continued to grow notwithstanding his 2008 criminal charge in a Florida court for procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute, has been suspected in some circles has having been as a ‘honeypot’ intelligence operation designed to provide him with blackmail, possibly for use by a foreign government, on highly influential figures in global finance, politics, media and entertainment.
Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s closest associate and daughter of the late British media proprietor and suspected intelligence asset Robert Maxwell, was found guilty of child sex trafficking and conspiring to abuse minors in 2021, and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022, and is now serving out her sentence at a low-security federal prison in Florida.
Last month, Mark Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein’s brother, told Tucker Carlson in a bombshell interview that he did not believe Jeffrey committed suicide in his New York jail cell while awaiting trial, suggesting there were numerous signs that he was murdered by the government.
