US senator wants urgent answers from Barclays over Jes Staley’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein | Barclays
Leading US senator Elizabeth Warren has called for urgent answers from Barclays over what she claims is a “blatant failure to meaningfully investigate” ties between the bank’s former boss Jes Staley and late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In a letter sent privately to Barclays chairman Nigel Higgins and seen by the Guardian, Warren, the most senior Democrat on the US senate banking committee, said it was “entirely unclear how Barclays, which allegedly investigated Staley’s connection to Epstein, failed to uncover this decades-old relationship.”
The letter, also sent on behalf of Congressmen Ro Khanna and Raja Krishnamoorthi, gave Barclays two weeks to answer a series of questions about how they handled information about links between its former chief executive and Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges.
Questions included whether there had been any review of “deficiencies” in the bank’s executive hiring process; this “allowed the board to hire a CEO with extensive professional and personal ties to a convicted sex offender”.
US lawmakers have raised a number of concerns about information arising from a court hearing in Britain last year in which Staley sought to overturn the regulator’s decision to bar him from the British banking sector, four years after he was forced to resign as boss of Barclays.
Those concerns included Higgins’ admission that he did not ask Staley about his last contact with Epstein before Higgins declared to the Financial Conduct Authority that it happened “well before” the CEO joined Barclays.
“It appears that neither you nor any member of the board conducted any deeper due diligence to verify Staley’s allegations and simply took his word for it,” the letter said, referencing exchanges between him and board members during Staley’s tenure. “It is unclear what specific steps Barclays took to investigate Staley and Epstein’s personal ties.”
US lawmakers said the incident triggered questions about how the bank was run. “Barclays’ apparent failure to meaningfully investigate or address Staley’s relationship with Epstein raises significant governance questions regarding the bank’s ability to hold senior executives accountable for misconduct,” the letter said.
The signatories also warned that it was a “privilege” to hold domestic banking licenses and operate in the US, where the bank has “extensive” operations and assets of around $200bn (£150bn). This privilege “depends on the continuing character and fitness of the management and the ability of the firm to conduct its operations in a safe and sound manner”.
The letter was sent hours before Staley was to be questioned in a closed-door hearing by the House Oversight Committee, which also includes the letter’s co-signers Khanna and Krishnamoorthi.
Staley first met Epstein in 2000, after he became head of JP Morgan’s private bank, where Epstein was a client. He later took over as chief executive of Barclays in 2015, but was forced to resign in 2021 after city officials launched an investigation into the nature of the relationship between the two men.
As Barclays vouched for in a 2019 letter to the Financial Conduct Authority, Staley was eventually banned from taking any job in Britain’s financial sector because he downplayed those ties.
A court fight over the former Barclays boss’s failed attempt to overturn his banking ban last year has revealed intimate details of the men’s friendship. As a result of the decision, Staley also lost £18 million in salary and bonuses from Barclays.
A spokesman for Barclays said: “The UK regulator concluded that Barclays was misled by Jes Staley. We conducted an investigation based on the information available to us at the time.”
“Since then, new information, not available to Barclays, has emerged that shows Mr. Staley misled Barclays and many others about the nature of his relationship with Epstein. This information relates to activities prior to his tenure at Barclays.”
