JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon talks to reporters as he leaves the U.S. Capitol after an unannounced meeting with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Schumer that was reportedly about the opportunity of the U.S. defaulting on its debt, outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, May 17, 2023.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon testified at a deposition in Latest York on Friday that he had no involvement within the accounts of longtime customer Jeffrey Epstein, the bank said.
Dimon was being deposed for lawsuits accusing JPMorgan of facilitating and taking advantage of Epstein’s sex trafficking of young women, which he financed with money he had on deposit there.
“Our CEO reaffirmed after his deposition that, as he has previously said, that he never met with him, never emailed him, doesn’t recall ever discussing his accounts internally, and was not involved in any decisions about his account,” said a bank spokeswoman. “There are hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of emails and other documents which were produced on this case and never one comes near even suggesting that he had any role in decisions about Epstein’s accounts.”
The spokeswoman added: “As now we have said, we now know that Epstein’s behavior was monstrous, and his victims deserve justice. In hindsight, any association with him was a mistake and we regret it, but these suits are misdirected as we didn’t help him commit his heinous crimes.”
Dimon gave his deposition at JPMorgan’s headquarters in Manhattan. The bank earlier lost an effort to dismiss the suits by the plaintiffs – the federal government of the U.S. Virgin Islands and an anonymous Epstein accuser.
The suits claim that JPMorgan, the largest bank in america, kept Epstein as a customer even after learning he was being investigated for sexually abusing underage girls in Florida and after he pleaded guilty in a state charge there in 2008 to paying for sex from a minor.
The bank is accused within the complaints in U.S. District Court in Manhattan of doing so with the intention to keep Epstein, who kept tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars in accounts there, despite internal concerns about his slimy status.
The Virgin Islands says Epstein used frequent money withdrawals he produced from those accounts to pay for young women to travel to the American territory in order that he and others could abuse them at his residence on a non-public island he owned.
“Human trafficking was the [principal] business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JPMorgan,” the Virgin Islands’ suit says.
Dimon’s deposition was taken in private. The questions he was asked and the answers he gave would only turn out to be public in the event that they are utilized in court filings and proceedings, or in the event that they are leaked.
Also on Friday afternoon, Judge Jed Rakoff held a hearing on a request by lawyers for the accuser to certify her lawsuit as a category motion grievance, which could add dozens of potential accusers as plaintiffs. JPMorgan opposes that request. Rakoff is anticipated to rule by late June on that issue.
Along with questioning Dimon under oath, the Virgin Islands has issued a flurry of subpoenas in search of documents related to Epstein and JPMorgan from a lot of high-profile people the federal government suspects Epstein tried to recruit as fellow clients of the bank.
They include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, former Disney executive Michael Ovitz, Hyatt Hotels executive chairman Thomas Pritzker and Mort Zuckerman, the billionaire real estate investor.
Dimon’s deposition comes greater than every week after Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $75 million to Epstein victims to settle a would-be class motion lawsuit by one in all his accusers. Deutsche Bank had taken on Epstein as a customer after JPMorgan severed ties with him in 2013, after keeping him as a client for 15 years.
JPMorgan has said Dimon had not reviewed Epstein’s accounts when he was a client there from 1998 through 2013, the 12 months that JPMorgan severed its relationship with him.
Epstein died six years later from suicide in a Latest York jail a month after federal authorities charged him with trafficking girls for sex.
JPMorgan pushes back
JPMorgan, in a related grievance, has said that any civil liability it will have from Epstein’s conduct is the responsibility of its former executive Jes Staley, who was a friend of Epstein and his primary business contact on the bank.
Staley, who also denies any wrongdoing, earlier this week lost a bid to dismiss JPMorgan’s grievance against him, which amongst other things seeks to recoup $80 million in compensation from him.
Along with attempting to shift blame to Staley, JPMorgan this week in a court filing accused the Virgin Islands of being “complicit within the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.”
The filing said the Virgin Islands looked the opposite way as Epstein trafficked young women because he was giving high-ranking officials there money, advice and favors.
The filing specifically says that Epstein paid tuition for the youngsters of John de Jongh and his wife, Cecile, when John served as Virgin Islands governor and when Cecile worked for Epstein managing his firms within the territory.
Cecile also allegedly made efforts to secure student visas for young women connected to Epstein, and was his “primary conduit for spreading money and influence throughout the USVI government.”
The Washington Post on Friday published details of a deposition earlier taken of Mary Erdoes, who runs JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management division.
“Oh boy,” Erdoes wrote in a 2011 email to a different bank executive after she came upon Epstein’s status as a sex offender consequently of his Florid conviction had been affirmed, The Washington Post reported.
The newspaper said that was “not less than the sixth time Erdoes … had been alerted to Epstein’s criminal or civil legal trouble for sex crimes.”
