The ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee urged four bank CEOs on Wednesday to offer more information related to their connections to disgraced financier and late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“You stated that you ‘regret any association with that man at all’ … and assured that you would provide information to this Committee,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, wrote to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. “We are now writing to take you up on those words of contrition and promise of compliance.”
Raskin is asking JPMorgan to provide, by Oct. 22, all documents and information pertaining to transactions the bank may have flagged for their connection to Epstein, his onetime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell or any associated minors who may have been sex-trafficking victims.
The Maryland lawmaker wrote Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, BNY CEO Robin Vince and Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing with similar requests, but JPMorgan’s was arguably the most detailed.
JPMorgan in September 2023 agreed to pay $75 million to settle a lawsuit the U.S. Virgin Islands brought against the bank over its Epstein-related conduct. Months earlier, the bank paid $290 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by alleged sex trafficking victims.
JPMorgan banked Epstein from 1998 until 2013, when the CEO of its investment bank, Jes Staley, left. Raskin labeled that time as a 15-year span in which “JPMorgan turned a blind eye to evidence of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking.”
After 2013, Deutsche served as Epstein’s bank. The German lender paid $75 million in 2023 to settle a lawsuit from alleged sex trafficking victims.
Staley, meanwhile, became CEO of Barclays but resigned in 2021 amid an investigation by British regulators into how he characterized his relationship with Epstein. Staley has since been banned for life from the banking industry in the U.K.
But Staley “was no lone bad apple,” Raskin wrote Wednesday, naming two other executives who rose to higher executive roles at JPMorgan after the lender banked Epstein.
Raskin on Wednesday additionally asked JPMorgan to provide the House Judiciary Committee with any Epstein-related communications to or from Staley or the other two executives, including now-asset and wealth management CEO Mary Erdoes.
Raskin is also seeking records of internal discussions regarding Epstein’s accounts, any related risk assessments and any correspondence with regulators and law enforcement.
In particular, Raskin wants Dimon to “help Congress understand how Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and their co-conspirators were able to use your bank and others to conduct more than $1.5 billion in suspicious financial transactions to operate their international sex trafficking ring for years without ever being caught,” the lawmaker wrote Wednesday.
Raskin noted that JPMorgan failed to timely file suspicion activity reports related to Epstein transactions but flagged 4,700 transfers totaling $1.1 billion a decade or more after the fact.
Raskin said a September hearing with FBI Director Kash Patel indicated the agency failed to “follow the money” when it did not identify any co-conspirators to Epstein’s conduct.
House Judiciary Committee Democrats moved to subpoena Epstein-related financial records at all four banks, Raskin wrote. But Republicans, save for one, blocked that effort, he added.
“If you truly regret JPMorgan’s shameful association with Mr. Epstein, we trust that you will work with us to promptly produce these records,” Raskin wrote to Dimon. “In the face of this stubborn obfuscation and apparent ongoing cover-up, Congress has a duty to follow the money and ascertain all the facts.”
