JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said he had never heard of Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes against teenage girls and young women until the financier was arrested in 2019, according to a transcript of the Videotaped deposition released Wednesday.
Dimon said he first heard about it “when the story first came to light. He was arrested, and all the stories came out about everyone he knows. And the reason I remember it is that I was surprised that I didn’t know it before.
Asked by a lawyer if he had ever heard Jeffrey Epstein’s name before his arrest, Dimon replied, “Not that I remember.”
Dimon made the revelation during a videotaped deposition last week in a lawsuit against the nation’s largest bank.
The lawsuits on behalf of victims of Epstein and the U.S. Virgin Islands in Manhattan federal court seek to hold JPMorgan financially responsible for Epstein’s decades-long abuse of teenage girls and young women.
The bank, in addition to denying the allegations, one of its former executives has sued, saying the man hid Epstein’s crimes to keep Epstein as a client.
Epstein was 66 when he apparently committed suicide in a Manhattan federal prison cell where he was awaiting federal trial on sex trafficking charges after his bail request was denied. He had pleaded not guilty to charges of sexually abusing dozens of girls, some as young as 14.
According to lawsuits filed late last year, JPMorgan provided Epstein with large sums of money from 1998 until August 2013, even though he was aware of his sex trafficking practices.
The 416-page deposition, parts of which have been heavily redacted with entire pages blacked out, was made public through an agreement between the attorneys in the cases.
Confronted by deposition with an email from Epstein’s former aide suggesting Dimon was due to meet Epstein as early as 2010, the chairman and chairman of JPMorgan insisted that was untrue.
“I never had a date with Jeff Epstein. I never met Jeff Epstein. I never knew Jeff Epstein. I never went to Jeff Epstein. I never ate with Jeff Epstein. I have no idea what they are referring to here,” he said.
After the email from Epstein’s assistant asking if “heavy snacks” or dinner should be prepared for the meeting, Epstein replied “snacks”.
While Dimon responded after being confronted with the email, a lawyer noted that Epstein did not respond saying, “you are misinformed, Jamie Dimon is not coming.”
Dimon said, “I don’t know what he was thinking at the time. He was obviously misinformed. I never – it never happened.
“I don’t think Jeff Epstein ever arranged for me to meet anyone that I know of,” he said.
Epstein had a close relationship with Jes Staley, who ran several parts of JPMorgan, including its investment bank and wealth management arm, until Staley left the bank in 2013. Staley became CEO of the bank British Barclays, but had to resign. of this work when Epstein’s indictment came to light.
JPMorgan is trying to make Staley a defendant in its legal cases against Epstein, arguing that he downplayed or hid issues with Epstein.
At one point in the deposition, Dimon agreed that Epstein was a “disaster” and “terrible” for the bank.
Throughout the deposition, Dimon insisted that retaining Epstein as a client would ultimately have been left to the company’s general counsel.
Dimon was asked: “If you had known in 2010 that Jeffrey Epstein was a sex trafficker, that Jeffrey Epstein was a bank customer, that Jeffrey Epstein was withdrawing tens of thousands of dollars in cash every month, would you have, as the chief managing director of the bank, said, “We have to get rid of this guy”, whether or not the general counsel told you that it was the right thing to do? »
“I think everyone involved, if they had known then what is known today, including me, would have taken that position,” he replied.
