JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is set for deposition in Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking lawsuits.
A federal judge instructed Dimon to set aside two days for questioning in litigation that accused America’s largest bank of knowingly benefiting from Jeffrey Epstein’s forced prostitution ring of underaged children.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff made the decision to allow the JPMorgan CEO to be deposed in a Manhattan federal court on April 19.A friend of Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Les Wexner, and other powerful celebrities, Epstein allegedly killed himself in a Manhattan cell jail in 2019, under suspicious circumstances, while awaiting trial on criminal child sex-trafficking charges.
An unnamed Epstein sex-trafficking victim and the U.S. Virgin Islands are both separately suing JPMorgan over its ties to Epstein, who was a client of the banking giant from 1998 to 2013.Judge Orders Trials to Go Ahead
Last month, the federal judge rejected JPMorgan’s request to dismiss the lawsuits filed by the Virgin Islands and the unknown Epstein victim after the bank stated that questioning its boss would not yield any useful information.“The plaintiffs’ counsel know our CEO has no relevant knowledge, but persist with this media stunt,” JPMorgan said in a statement.
“A review of more than two decades of emails and other documents makes it clear that he had no involvement with Epstein or his accounts. He does not recall ever meeting, speaking, or communicating with him,” the bank said.
Rakoff gave attorneys representing the plaintiffs in two lawsuits against JPMorgan a total of five hours to question Dimon during a telephone conference with the lawyers.The judge also allowed lawyers for former JPMorgan executive Jes Staley, whom the bank is suing for allowing Epstein to remain a client, to separately question Dimon for two hours, according to the court docket.
JPMorgan had argued that Staley, who was once considered to be a successor to Dimon and not the bank, is legally responsible for the suits related to Epstein.
The major investment bank filed an $80 million suit against Staley in March, accusing him of concealing his “inappropriate relationship” with Epstein and demanding that he return his earnings as its former investment banking chief.
He resigned as Barclays CEO in late 2021 after an investigation by British financial regulators over his relationship with Epstein.
Rakoff further ordered that representatives for the two plaintiffs report back to him after the first day of depositions in order to determine whether a second day is necessary. However, he said he might allow the depositions to go beyond the time which had been initially set aside.
Dimon Allegedly Allowed Epstein to Maintain Accounts at Bank
The CEO’s deposition follows last month’s questioning of Mary Callahan Erodes, who was the head of JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management division in 2009.A court filing released last week cited Erdoes admitting in her deposition “that JPMorgan was aware by 2006 that Epstein was accused of paying cash to have underage girls and young women brought to his home,” according to the attorneys for the Virgin Islands.
She admitted in her testimony that JPMorgan only dropped Epstein as a client seven years after he was accused of sex trafficking children.
Erodes said that she only acted after learning that the tens of thousands of dollars he routinely withdrew from his account were for “actual cash.”
Attorneys for the islands accused the bank of allowing the facilitation of “concealed wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of—and were in fact part of—a criminal enterprise whose currency was for the sexual servitude of dozens of women and girls in and beyond the Virgin Islands.”
“Human trafficking was the [principal] business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JP Morgan,” the filing stated.
“If Staley is a rogue employee, why isn’t Jamie Dimon?“ she continued, saying, “Staley knew, Dimon knew, JPMorgan Chase knew.”
