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

In his Amended Reply, Mr Staley raised a number of criticisms of the Authority’s approach to its investigation, which was opened in December 2019. In particular, Mr Staley contended that the Authority’s decision-making process when commencing a formal investigation was not conducted fairly and impartially in that:

Mr Staley also contended that the Authority did not make reasonable disclosure of material in its possession either at the date of Mr Staley’s first interview on 20 December 2019 and/or at the time of the subsequent interviews with Mr Staley conducted in June 2020 and March 2021. It is argued that he was placed at a significant disadvantage in attempting to provide the Authority, during these interviews, with his recollection of the events in question concerning his relationship with Mr Epstein.

In the event, these concerns were not put to the relevant witnesses other than (in relation to the disclosure issue) to Mr Steward. Mr Smith, in his closing submissions, reiterated the criticism that it was unfair of the Authority to keep from Mr Staley the email correspondence obtained from JPM when interviewed him on 20 December 2019. Mr Smith submits that the Authority deliberately disclosed only a selection of the emails which it had in its possession and which it had then analysed in a document which the Authority created. Out of the 1200+ emails provided by JPM the Authority provided Mr Staley with 15 emails which incorporated a number of chains. They included emails relating to expressions of friendship, the purchase and sale of American Century, the 2009 email relating to the visit to the Santa Fe ranch, the email referring to “Snow White”, and Mr and Mrs Staley’s gratitude for what Mr Epstein had done for their daughter.

Mr Smith submits that the Authority’s failure to conduct the interview of 20 December 2019 fairly should deprive the Authority of its ability to make constructive criticisms of how Mr Staley responded to their questions at that time. He says it was 2 hours into that interview before the Authority asked Mr Staley to explain his relationship with Mr Epstein which was a carefully constructed attempt by the Authority to place Mr Staley at a significant disadvantage in that interview.

We accept, as the Tribunal has done in previous cases, that where the subject of an investigation appears to have been treated unfairly during the interview or the lead up to it, that the Tribunal should put less weight on interview evidence when compared with what the subject has said on the matter subsequently, and therefore should place limited weight on any inconsistencies between interview evidence and evidence given later in the process.

However, in this case we are not satisfied that the Authority acted unfairly in its approach to disclosure in advance of the interview in December 2019. It seems that Mr Staley was given a reasonable selection of emails which would indicate the existence of a personal rather than a purely professional relationship between him and Mr Epstein. He himself would have known, without needing to see the entirety of the email correspondence, that bearing in mind the frequency of the contact between the two men up to October 2015 over a period of 15 years and the manner in which the professional relationship developed into a personal one, what the nature of that relationship was. We do not consider that it was necessary for him to see the emails to jog his memory on the essence of that relationship, as Mr Steward observed in his cross-examination.

It was also open to Mr Staley to have responded unilaterally with any further representations, having received a transcript of the interviews.

In any event, we have not relied to any material extent on the interview evidence in evaluating the nature of the relationship between Mr Epstein and Mr Staley. As we have observed at [210] and [211] above, Mr Staley did not materially alter the line he took on the closeness of the relationship between what he said in interview and what he said in his first witness statement. In coming to our conclusions on the closeness of the relationship, we have relied to a large extent on our evaluation of the correspondence and what Mr Staley said in his cross-examination.

We therefore do not consider that Mr Staley’s criticism of the disclosure process is of material significance in relation to our evaluation of the evidence regarding the closeness of the relationship between Mr Epstein and Mr Staley.

We now turn to the issues that we need to decide in order to determine this reference.