Bank’s links to sex offender financier deeper than previously known, as it faces lawsuit brought by US Virgin Islands
Senior executives with the world banking large JP Morgan maintained contact with disgraced financier and intercourse wrongdoer Jeffrey Epstein for years after losing him as a customer in 2013, six years after he used to be charged with solicitation of a minor, in accordance to a new report.
The allegation, pronounced in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, comes as JP Morgan, the world’s greatest financial institution with the aid of assets, is being sued via an unidentified Epstein accuser and the US Virgin Islands – the place Epstein owned a non-public island – for benefiting from human trafficking through ignoring inner pink flags about his behavior.
According to the Journal, Mary Erdoes, who now runs JP Morgan’s $4tn asset and wealth administration business, visited Epstein’s townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 2011 and 2013. Erdoes has in the past stated via a spokesperson that the solely time she remembered “formally meeting” Epstein used to be the day she fired him as a client.
John Duffy, who ran JP Morgan’s non-public bank, additionally allegedly visited the townhouse in early 2013 a month earlier than the financial institution renewed Epstein’s borrowing authorizations. A 0.33 JP Morgan executive, Justin Nelson, met with the disgraced financier about a half-dozen times between 2014 and 2017, the file said.
Some of these conferences have been characterised as regarding a multibillion-dollar donor-advised philanthropy fund Epstein had pitched to JP Morgan that may want to assist carry rich customers in Epstein’s orbit to the bank.
But criminal filings in the US Virgin Islands lawsuit show up to exhibit that senior JP Morgan executives disregarded pleas from compliance officers to reduce ties with the financier, arguing that there used to be “lots of smoke. Lots of questions”.
“See under new allegations of an investigation associated to baby trafficking – are you nonetheless relaxed with this patron who is now a registered intercourse offender,” one compliance officer wrote in a 2010 email.
The lawsuit alleges that Epstein’s conduct was once broadly regarded at JP Morgan. In one instance, senior executives made jokes about his activity in younger girls. In 2008, two years after Epstein was once charged with solicitation of a minor in Florida, Erdoes “received an electronic mail asking her whether or not Epstein used to be at an match ‘with Miley Cyrus,’” then starring in Disney’s Hannah Montana.
Other accusations protected that JP Morgan knew Epstein “routinely” made $40,000 to $80,000 money withdrawals various instances a month. In a deposition, Erdoes has stated that her business enterprise had been conscious that Epstein had been accused of paying money to have “underage ladies and younger women” delivered to his domestic some seven years earlier than the financial institution dropped him as a client.
JP Morgan was once Epstein’s banker for 15 years till 2013. The financier died through suicide in 2019 whilst expecting trial on prices that he sex-trafficked underage girls. The flurry of new accusations encompass claims through JP Morgan towards former government Jes Staley of actively taking part in Epstein’s crimes.
Staley, who denies the allegations, later served as chief govt of Barclays. He was once pressured out of the job in 2021 after an interior investigation questioning the accuracy with which he described his relationship with Epstein.
JP Morgan’s longstanding chief govt Jamie Dimon is due to be wondered underneath oath for up to seven hours subsequent month as section of each the US Virgin Islands and the Epstein sexual abuse accuser, and the Jes Staley lawsuits. He has denied having any know-how of the bank’s deliberations over keeping Epstein as a client.
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