Ex-Barclays boss exchanged 1,200 emails with billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein over four years, show regulators’ findings
- Former Barclays boss Jes Staley exchanged 1,200 emails with Jeffrey Epstein
- Mr Staley, 64, resigned from Barclays last week ahead of a City investigation
- Emails with the sex offender included unexplained references to ‘snow white’
Former Barclays boss Jes Staley exchanged 1,200 emails with billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein over a four-year period, including unexplained references to ‘snow white’.
The scale of their correspondence was unknown until the emails were examined by UK regulators.
Mr Staley, 64, resigned from Barclays last week after the bank was shown the result of an official City investigation before it will be made public.
He had previously told Barclays his relationship was purely professional having been Epstein’s private banker at JP Morgan.
Former Barclays boss Jes Staley (pictured) exchanged 1,200 emails with billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein over a four-year period
But it is understood that the investigation suggests the father-of-two may have played down his role in Epstein’s affairs.
Many of the emails between Mr Staley and Epstein, dating from 2008 to 2012, were general in nature – talking about meeting up for drinks or news stories. But the chummy tone will raise eyebrows, as may the unexplained reference to ‘snow white’.
But no conclusions have yet been drawn over the phrase by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), according to the Financial Times.
Kathleen Harris, a lawyer for Mr Staley, said: ‘We wish to make it expressly clear that our client had no involvement in any of the alleged crimes committed by Epstein, and codewords were never used by Mr Staley in any communications with Epstein, ever.’
Epstein killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Mr Staley’s ties with the paedophile tycoon began in the early 2000s when Epstein, who managed money for billionaires, was a client of JP Morgan’s private bank.
They became close enough that Mr Staley visited Epstein while he was serving a prison sentence in Florida in 2009 for procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute.
And in common with the Duke of York and others, Mr Staley stayed in touch with him for several years after his downfall.
He has said their relationship began to ‘taper off’ after he left the US bank in 2013. But just a few months before joining Barclays in 2015, Mr Staley and his wife sailed their 90ft yacht to Epstein’s private Caribbean island, Little Saint James, for lunch. Epstein carried out many of his crimes against underage girls on the island.
Mr Staley, who is married to interior designer Debbie, has been replaced at Barclays by CS Venkatakrishnan. The bank said last week he was entitled to 12 months’ notice and so will continue to receive his current fixed annual pay of £2.4million in cash, Barclays shares, a pension allowance of £120,000 and other benefits until October 31 next year.
Barclays pointed to an earlier statement that said ‘the investigation makes no findings that Mr Staley saw, or was aware of, any of Epstein’s alleged crimes’. A spokesman for Mr Staley said he ‘intends to contest the initial findings of the FCA and PRA investigation’.
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