A number one Democratic senator has written to the boss of JP Morgan to request clarification on the financial institution’s contact with the kid intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Elizabeth Warren, the highest Democrat on the senate banking committee, wrote to Jamie Dimon final week to ask if he took recommendation from Epstein whereas lobbying towards a UK tax on banker bonuses, in a letter revealed by the committee on Monday.
“It’s vital that Congress and the American public absolutely perceive the extent of any interactions the financial institution and also you had with Epstein,” the senator wrote.
Dimon, who has been chair and chief govt of the biggest US financial institution for 20 years, instructed a courtroom in 2023 he had by no means met Epstein and had not heard the late intercourse offender’s identify till his 2019 arrest.
However a cache of paperwork launched by the US Division of Justice this 12 months has piled stress on Dimon, one of the highly effective figures on Wall Road, and raised contemporary questions on his hyperlinks with Epstein.
A 2009 electronic mail emerged this 12 months as a part of the Epstein information, which appeared to point out the disgraced financier asking the previous Labour minister Peter Mandelson if Dimon ought to foyer the UK chancellor, Alistair Darling, in an try and dissuade him from introducing a tax on banker bonuses.
Mandelson replied that Dimon ought to “mildly threaten” the chancellor – and the banker is reported to have subsequently spoken to Darling. Dimon allegedly identified that JP Morgan was an enormous UK employer and purchaser of presidency bonds, and threatened to cancel funding in new London headquarters.
Mandelson was sacked as US ambassador final September due to revelations about his shut friendship with Epstein.
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“These resurfaced emails and associated reporting elevate critical questions concerning the extent of the financial institution’s relationship with Epstein, and your information of those ties,” Warren stated in her letter, which was first reported by the Monetary Instances.
The previous JP Morgan govt and ex-Barclays boss Jes Staley has beforehand alleged that he communicated with Dimon in regards to the financial institution’s relationship with Epstein. A spokesperson for JP Morgan stated: “No such dialog ever occurred. Additional, a UK tribunal has already known as Staley’s testimony evasive and unreliable.”
The financial institution, which sued Staley, claims he hid Epstein’s crimes from colleagues to maintain him as a consumer. The events had been subsequently reported to have reached a confidential settlement.
A spokesperson for JP Morgan stated: “Any affiliation with the person was a mistake and we remorse it, however we might not have continued doing enterprise with him had we believed he was engaged in ongoing crimes. We exited him as a consumer in 2013 – years earlier than his federal intercourse trafficking arrest and years after the federal government had damning info they saved from us.”
The US financial institution reiterated that Dimon by no means met Epstein and “was not concerned in any choices about his account”, whereas he “often speaks his thoughts on unhealthy, anti-growth coverage and has his personal views”.
Any suggestion that Dimon spoke with Epstein or took counsel from him was false, the spokesperson added.
