A leading Democratic senator has written to the boss of JP Morgan to request clarification on the bank’s contact with the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the senate banking committee, wrote to Jamie Dimon last week to ask if he took advice from Epstein while lobbying against a UK tax on banker bonuses, in a letter published by the committee on Monday.
“It is critical that Congress and the American public fully understand the extent of any interactions the bank and you had with Epstein,” the senator wrote.
Dimon, who has been chair and chief executive of the largest US bank for two decades, told a court in 2023 he had never met Epstein and had not heard the late sex offender’s name until his 2019 arrest.
But a cache of documents released by the US Department of Justice this year has piled pressure on Dimon, one of the most powerful figures on Wall Street, and raised fresh questions about his links with Epstein.
A 2009 email emerged this year as part of the Epstein files, which appeared to show the disgraced financier asking the former Labour minister Peter Mandelson if Dimon should lobby the UK chancellor, Alistair Darling, in an attempt to dissuade him from introducing a tax on banker bonuses.
Mandelson replied that Dimon should “mildly threaten” the chancellor – and the banker is reported to have subsequently spoken to Darling. Dimon allegedly pointed out that JP Morgan was a big UK employer and purchaser of government bonds, and threatened to cancel investment in new London headquarters.
Mandelson was sacked as US ambassador last September because of revelations about his close friendship with Epstein.
“These resurfaced emails and related reporting raise serious questions regarding the extent of the bank’s relationship with Epstein, and your knowledge of these ties,” Warren said in her letter, which was first reported by the Financial Times.
The former JP Morgan executive and ex-Barclays boss Jes Staley has previously alleged that he communicated with Dimon about the bank’s relationship with Epstein. A spokesperson for JP Morgan said: “No such conversation ever occurred. Further, a UK tribunal has already called Staley’s testimony evasive and unreliable.”
The bank, which sued Staley, claims he hid Epstein’s crimes from colleagues to keep him as a client. The parties were subsequently reported to have reached a confidential settlement.
A spokesperson for JP Morgan said: “Any association with the man was a mistake and we regret it, but we would not have continued doing business with him had we believed he was engaged in ongoing crimes. We exited him as a client in 2013 – years before his federal sex trafficking arrest and years after the government had damning information they kept from us.”
The US bank reiterated that Dimon never met Epstein and “was not involved in any decisions about his account”, while he “regularly speaks his mind on bad, anti-growth policy and has his own views”.
Any suggestion that Dimon spoke with Epstein or took counsel from him was false, the spokesperson added.
