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

On 2 October 2019, Mr Higgins telephoned Mr Gillies asking him to give an objective view on whether there was a need to inform the Board of Barclays of the matter. We note that in its original enquiry the Authority had asked that Mr Higgins confirm that the Board of Barclays had satisfied itself about the relationship between the two men given the stories that were coming out: see [331] above.

On 4 October 2019, Mr Staley spoke to Mr Gillies. We have seen a transcription of Mr Gillies’s notes of that call, but they are not verbatim and it is difficult to discern exactly what was said. There was nothing to indicate from these notes that Mr Staley gave Mr Gillies a fuller or more accurate description of his relationship with Mr Epstein than that Mr Higgins and Mr Hoyt were aware of through the medium of the Bowdoin College Talking Points and the various drafts of the Letter.

Mr Gillies then spoke to Mr Higgins on the same day. On that call, Mr Gillies reported his view that the Board did not need to be briefed, on the basis that there had been “no relationship with Barclays, no contact since he joined Barclays” and that nothing he had heard “suggests a lack of integrity, skill, care and diligence”. Accordingly, the Board of Barclays as a whole were not informed about the Authority’s enquiry until the Authority opened its investigation in November 2019. Mr Gillies reported that from his point of view, the main criticism that could be levied at Mr Staley was “how could he have missed it”, but that criticism could be applied to many others; the only additional fact was that Mr Staley had flown on Mr Epstein’s jet.