JPMorgan Chase fights attempts by lawyers to question CEO Jamie Dimon over bank’s decision to retain Jeffrey Epstein as a client for 15 years – but agrees to let one of his top lieutenants to be deposed under oath
- Dimon ‘was not involved in any decisions regarding Epstein’s account’ they claim
- Instead, the bank agreed to find a date in March for a deposition of Mary Erdoes
- JPMorgan is in hot water, facing a lawsuit over keeping Epstein as a client
JPMorgan Chase is fighting attempts by lawyers to question its CEO Jamie Dimon under oath in litigation over the bank’s decision to retain Jeffrey Epstein as a client for 15 years.
At the same time, the investment bank has agreed this week for one of its chief executive lieutenants to be deposed under oath.
According to court filings lodged on Tuesday, the bank argued that said Dimon was not an ‘appropriate deponent’. But they instead agreed to find a date in March for a deposition of Mary Erdoes.
Erdoes is one of the bank’s top executives – and is currently the head of JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management division – where sex offender financier Epstein was a client.
And according to the FT, JPMorgan also agreed to have Mary Casey interviewed by lawyers. She worked as a private banker in the period before Epstein was dropped.
Last month, lawyers begged the court to get JPMorgan to hand over documents which they believed would detail Dimon’s alleged complicit communications. Those are said to explain why he decided to retain Epstein as a client, despite his allegations of salacious human trafficking.
The bank are attempting to block lawyers grilling the CEO Jamie Dimon under oath in litigation over JPMorgan’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein
Mary Erdoes, Chief Executive Officer of J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Sex offender financier Epstein was a client under her department
This comes just months after a new lawsuit launched by the US Virgin Islands’ attorney general accused JPMorgan Chase of ‘turning a blind eye’ to the horrific sex crimes committed by Jeffrey Epstein.
But now, the lender is claiming that Dimon is ‘not relevant’ to the US Virgin Islands’ case. They added: ‘he was not involved in any decisions regarding Epstein’s account’.
In the suit, USVI AG Denise George accuses Chase of ‘knowingly providing and pulling the levers through which recruiters and victims were paid.’ The complaint was filed in Manhattan District Court.
George goes on to allege that Chase ignored the truth surrounding Epstein, such as his 2008 conviction in Florida for procuring a child for prostitution, in order to keep him as a client, reports The New York Times.
The bank kept Epstein as a client between 1998 and 2013 before finally cutting ties.
For years, the secretive financier was based out of his private island, Little St. James in the Virgin Islands. He was found dead in 2019 in his jail cell in Manhattan while awaiting trial on sexual abuse of minors and trafficking charges. The official cause of death was suicide.
The new lawsuit explicitly states that Epstein used his home on Little St. James for his sex crimes. In June, Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years prison for trafficking minors for sex.
Epstein first became a client at Chase in 1998. There have been numerous reports since his death that the bank’s executives sought to keep Epstein on board due to his connections with some of the richest people in the world.
The bank kept Epstein as a client between 1998 and 2013 before finally cutting ties. The disgraced financier died by suicide while in jail over sex trafficking minors
One section of the lawsuit reads: ‘Human trafficking was the principal business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JPMorgan.’
AG George said that the suit was part of an ‘outgoing effort’ to bring accountability to those who helped facilitate Epstein’s actions.
The complaint goes on to accuse Chase of concealing ‘wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude’ of young girls.
The damages being sought by the US Virgin Islands are unspecified in the lawsuit.
In January, another banker was accused of ‘personally observing ‘ Jeffrey Epstein abusing young women, according to a victim’s lawsuit filed against JP Morgan.
Jes Staley, 66, resigned as chief executive of UK bank Barclays in November 2021 after the bank said it was ‘disappointed’ with the outcome of a report into his links to the convicted sex offender.
He has now been named in a lawsuit filed by one of Epstein’s victims, a woman known only as Jane Doe 1.
She is suing JP Morgan, where Staley was chief executive until 2013 and had Epstein as a client. The lawsuit, filed at Manhattan federal court, alleges that Staley was aware of Epstein trafficking women and witnessed him abusing them.
According to the FT, the new court filings on Tuesday contained claims that Staley was personally involved in the decision to keep Epstein on as a client in 2008.
This occurred after the financier was arrested for soliciting a minor in Florida, according to lawyers.
The lawyers cited an internal JPMorgan exchange in which it was noted: ‘Jes Staley conferred with Stephen Cutler and the decision was made to keep him . . . as a client.’
Cutler, who was part of JPMorgan’s general counsel at the time, was ‘also included in at least one rapid response meeting related to new information regarding Epstein’s human trafficking’.
Last month, lawyers begged the court to get JPMorgan to hand over documents which they believed would detail Dimon’s alleged complicit communications, in which he decided to keep banking Epstein despite his allegations of salacious human trafficking
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