The CEO of JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon insisted in a Thursday interview that while it’s “so sad” the massive investment bank had a “relationship” with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, the financial group bears no responsibility for his crimes.
“I am so sad that we had any relationship to that man whatsoever,” Dimon told US media, in a reference to the infamous convicted sex offender whose supposed suicide at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center in 2019 remains the source of widespread suspicion.
“You know, we had top lawyers evaluating, from the [US Securities and Exchange Commission] enforcement, the [Department of Justice], you know, and obviously, had we known then what we know today, we would have done things differently.”
“But it’s very unfortunate, and I have deep respect for these women,” Dimon claimed.
According to one American business channel, “court filings this week show in detail that for years employees of JPMorgan shared with each other concerns about having Epstein as a client,” a timeframe the outlet noted was “well before the bank terminated its relationship with him.”
As a client of JPMorgan Chase, Epstein kept millions in the bank for at least five years after his first child sex crime conviction in 2008.
The infamous financier was sentenced to just 13 months at the time following accusations by dozens of underage girls that he’d abused them and allowed others to do the same for payment.
Former Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta — who was the US Attorney in Miami at the time — reportedly justified Epstein’s lenient sentence by telling then-President Donald Trump’s team:
“I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone” as the case was supposedly “above his pay grade.”
As US media revealed in late April, a trove of recently-unearthed documents showed meetings between Epstein and “several prominent people, including three with William Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, when he was the deputy secretary of state in 2014” — meetings which occurred years after Epstein’s first child sex abuse convictions.