The former boss of Barclays was introduced to three of the world’s richest people by the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, a court was told.
Jes Staley, 68, told the Upper Tribunal in London on Friday in his final day in the witness box that Epstein, who was an influential financier, was “very smart” and “curious” and that his “range of interests intellectually was very broad”.
The court heard that on Staley’s final meeting with Epstein, which took place on the sex offender’s private island in the US Virgin Islands in April 2015, a White House political adviser under the US presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton was staying with the paedophile.
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“Epstein had introduced me to at that time probably three of the five wealthiest people in the world,” the former Barclays boss also said, in reference to his time as a senior financier at JPMorgan Chase, America’s biggest bank.
He had told the court in a written witness statement that Epstein introduced him to figures such as Lord Mandelson, and that the financier’s contacts had included Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who set up Google, and Leon Black, the private equity tycoon.
Staley spent 34 years at JPMorgan and it was while running its private banking business that he met Epstein, who was a client of the division, in either 1999 or 2000. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to prostitution charges, including one involving a minor, and died in prison in 2019 awaiting trial for sex trafficking.
The ties between Staley, an American who led Barclays between December 2015 and November 2021, and Epstein are at the centre of the court case, in which he is challenging the Financial Conduct Authority’s decision to ban him from senior City jobs and fine him £1.8 million.
The regulator alleges that Staley “recklessly misled” it by allowing Barclays to send it a letter in 2019 that contained misleading statements about his relationship with Epstein.
“This letter has created a lot of issues for me and I wish it would have been more fulsome,” he told the tribunal. “Clearly this letter has ended my career.”
The trial will hear closing submissions in April.
