UT (Tax & Chancery) UT-2023-000064 - [2025] UKUT 00203 (TCC)

Mr Epstein’s arrest on 6 July 2019 prompted significant press interest into a number of persons connected with Mr Epstein, including Mr Staley.

Mr Staley was approached by Ms Kate Kelly of the New York Times. Mr Doherty responded to Ms Kelly by email on 18 July 2019, having previously spoken to Mr Staley.

The response took the form of a number of bullet points the most significant of which are as follows:

“He first met JE around the year 2000 when he (Jes) took over the Private Bank at JPM

He was introduced to JE by the then CEO of JPM because JE was at the time a client of the Private Bank, and the CEO felt he was someone Jes should know and forge a strong client relationship with

JE proved to be extremely well networked (which tallies with the picture of him in the media)

JE liked Jes and began to introduce and recommend clients to JPM’s Private Bank

Over the course of circa 7-8 years Jes and JE were professionally close — particularly as JE had this propensity to regularly introduce business to JPM

It was a relationship predicated on business, but they were on good personal terms

Subsequent to JE’s conviction and incarceration in 2008 such contact that took place between the two of them became infrequent and insubstantive, and then stopped

JE was eventually asked to leave JPM’s Private Bank as a client (that’s when he took his business to DB) ——Jes was still in a senior role at JPM when that happened”.

As the Authority observed, this appears to be the first occasion on which the term “professionally close” was used. However, it was used in a limited sense because it gave the impression that the relationship was only close during the 7 to 8 years when Mr Staley ran the JPM Private Bank and before Mr Epstein’s conviction.

Consistentlywith that, the impression given was that after 2008 (when Mr Epstein was convicted), the relationship between he and Mr Staley cooled and that contact between them “became infrequent, insubstantive, and then stopped”. As our findings of fact on the nature of the relationship shows, this was not an accurate impression.

Mr Staley contends that the statement referred to at [270] above was an error introduced by Mr Doherty. He said in cross-examination that the statement did not originate from anything he told Mr Doherty or Barclays. However, Mr Doherty was not cross-examined on this point and, bearing in mind our assessment of Mr Doherty and his approach to responding to journalists, we do not consider that this would have been something that he would have said on his own initiative and, as we have said, the response was sent to Ms Kelly after he had spoken to Mr Staley. Accordingly, we find that what Mr Doherty wrote is a result of the impression given to him by Mr Staley.

In cross-examination, as he did in October 2015, Mr Staley sought to distance himself from Mr Doherty’s statement to the press by saying that these were Mr Doherty’s words and that how he might deal with the journalist is different to how he would deal with the regulator. As we have said, we do not consider that Mr Doherty would seek to mislead a journalist and we therefore reject Mr Staley’s evidence on this point.

Around the same time in July 2019, there was an enquiry from the Wall Street Journal. Again, this was dealt with by Mr Doherty, who discussed with Mr Staley a proposed response to questions posed by Jenny Strasburg of the newspaper. It appears that Mr Staley approved the terms of the response and, consistent with the approach taken by Mr Doherty in relation to the New York Times, the response was made on the basis of information given to him by Mr Staley, if not purely in Mr Staley’s own words. As was his practice, Mr Doherty drafted a response based on the impression that Mr Staley had given him as to the nature of the relationship between him and Mr Epstein.

As the Authority submitted, this response gave an identical impression that any “close professional” relationship had been during the period 2000-2008, and that it had been based upon Mr Epstein’s propensity to introduce clients to Mr Staley and JPM. The following questions and answers from the email reflect this position:

“How did Jes originally meet Epstein, and how?

He first met JE around the year 2000 follow when he (Jes) was appointed Head of the Private Bank at JPM. He was introduced to JE by the then CEO of JPM because JE was at the time a client of the private bank, and the CEO felt he was someone Jes should know and forge a relationship with

[…]

What was the nature and scope of Jes’s relationship with Epstein, and how long did it extend? Did Jes ever spend time with or travel with him? What can he tell us about Epstein’s private life, either as it overlapped with his professional life or otherwise?

Over the course of circa 7-8 years Jes and JE were professionally close – particularly as JE had this propensity to regularly introduce business to JPM. It was a relationship predicated on business, but they were on good terms. Jes has not had any contact at all with JE for several years now, and nor does he intend to do so.”

At first sight, and as was put to Mr Doherty in cross-examination, there appears to be an inconsistency in the way that the relationship between Mr Staley and Mr Epstein was described in the various responses to press enquiries between 2015 and 2019.

On 30 October 2015, Simkins had told the Mail on Sunday that, “it would be misleading to portray their ‘relationship’ as a close friendship”; on 26 October 2015, the Board of Barclays had been told that Mr Staley was clear that the relationship was “not close”; and then on 19 July 2019, the Wall Street Journal was told that Mr Staley and Mr Epstein had been “professionally close” (albeit over the period 2000-2008). However, as submitted by the Authority, these descriptions were not inconsistent because the first two were concerned with the relationship as it stood in 2015, whereas the third was describing the relationship in 2000-2008.

It was around this time in July 2019 that Mr Staley spoke to Mr Higgins about his relationship with Mr Epstein, seemingly for the first time. It appears that this was prompted by the fact that the New York Times was going to publish the fact that Mr Staley had met with Mr Epstein in 2009 when Mr Epstein was on work release from prison.

It is not clear specifically what Mr Higgins was told by Mr Staley at that stage. Mr Higgins’s evidence was that he could not be sure when he was told about certain matters and he could not clearly distinguish between what Mr Staley told him at this time and what he had picked up himself from the various press articles that were published at that time. He could only say what he knew by the time of the Letter in October 2019 and his evidence is that the Bowdoin College Talking Points accurately reflected what he knew of the relationship between Mr Staley and Mr Epstein at the time the Letter was drafted. We accept that evidence; there was nothing before us to contradict it.

Mr Higgins believes that either during this conversation or subsequently, he asked Mr Staley whether he had witnessed any of the matters alleged against Mr Epstein. This appears to have been instigated by Mr Higgins, using words to the effect of: “Jes, I just have to ask you, because it is unfortunately my job, you just have to tell me, is there anything about you and these girls?” Mr Higgins stated that Mr Staley told him there was not.