JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon speaks to reporters as he leaves the US Capitol after an unannounced meeting with US Senate Majority Leader Schumer reportedly about the possibility of a US debt default of this, outside the US Capitol in Washington, May 17, 2023.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon testified in a deposition in New York on Friday that he had nothing to do with the accounts of longtime customer Jeffrey Epstein, the bank said.
Dimon was fired over lawsuits accusing JPMorgan of facilitating and profiting from Epstein’s sex trafficking of young women, who he financed with money he had on deposit there.
“Our CEO reaffirmed after his deposition that, as he previously stated, that he never met with him, never emailed him, does not recall discussing his accounts internally, and was not involved in any decision about his account,” said a bank spokesperson. “There are millions and millions of emails and other documents produced in this case and nobody comes close to even suggesting that he had any role in the decisions about Epstein’s accounts.”
The spokesman added: “As we have said, we now know that Epstein’s behavior was appalling, and that his victims deserve justice. In hindsight, any association with him was a mistake and we regret it, but these lawsuits are misdirected because we didn’t help. He committed his heinous crimes.”
Dimon gave his deposition at JPMorgan’s headquarters in Manhattan. The bank previously lost an effort to dismiss the lawsuits by the plaintiffs – the government of the US Virgin Islands and an anonymous Epstein accuser.
The lawsuits allege that JPMorgan, the largest bank in the United States, kept Epstein as a customer even after learning he was being investigated for sexually abusing underage girls in Florida and after he admitted to guilty in a state case there in 2008 of paying for sex from a minor.
The bank is accused in complaints in US District Court in Manhattan of doing so to keep Epstein, who stashed tens of millions of dollars in accounts there, despite internal concerns about his sleazy reputation.
The Virgin Islands said Epstein used frequent withdrawals of money he made from those accounts to pay young women to travel to the American territory so he and others could abuse them at his residence in a private island he owns.
“Human trafficking is the [principal] business accounts maintained by Epstein at JPMorgan,” the Virgin Islands suit said.
Dimon’s deposition was taken in private. The questions he was asked and the answers he gave would only become public if they were used in court filings and proceedings, or if they were leaked.
Also Friday afternoon, Judge Jed Rakoff held a hearing on a request by attorneys for the accuser to certify his case as a class action complaint, which could add dozens of potential defendants as plaintiffs. JPMorgan opposes that request. Rakoff is expected to rule in late June on that issue.
In addition to questioning Dimon under oath, the Virgin Islands issued multiple subpoenas seeking documents related to Epstein and JPMorgan from several high-profile people the government suspects Epstein tried to recruit as fellow bank clients.
With them Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google co-founder 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 came more than a week later Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $75 million to Epstein’s victims to settle a would-be class action lawsuit by one of his accusers. Deutsche Bank took Epstein on as a customer after JPMorgan cut ties with him in 2013, after keeping him as a client for 15 years.
JPMorgan said Dimon did not review Epstein’s accounts when he was a client there from 1998 to 2013, the year JPMorgan severed its relationship with him.
Epstein died six years after committing suicide in a New York prison a month after federal authorities charged him with trafficking girls for sex.
JPMorgan backed down
JPMorgan, in a related complaint, said any civil liability from Epstein’s conduct would be borne by its former executive Jes Staley, who was a friend of Epstein’s and his primary business contact at the bank. .
Staley, who has also denied any wrongdoing, last week lost a bid to dismiss JPMorgan’s complaint against him, which among other things sought to recover $80 million in compensation from him.
In addition to trying to blame Staley, JPMorgan this week in a court filing accused the Virgin Islands of being “complicit in the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.”
The filing said the Virgin Islands looked the other way as Epstein trafficked young women because he was giving top officials there money, advice and favors.
The filing specifically states that Epstein paid tuition for the children of John de Jongh and his wife Cecile, when John served as governor of the Virgin Islands and when Cecile worked for Epstein managing his companies in the territory.
Cecile also allegedly worked to obtain student visas for young women connected to Epstein, and was his “main conduit for spreading money and influence throughout the USVI government.”
The Washington Post on Friday published details of a deposition previously taken from Mary Erdoes, who runs JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management division.
“Oh boy,” Erdoes wrote in a 2011 email to another bank executive after he learned Epstein’s status as a sex offender as a result of his Florida conviction was upheld, The Washington Post reported.
The newspaper said that was “at least the sixth time that Erdoes … has been alerted to Epstein’s criminal or civil legal problems for sex crimes.”
