US Senator Warren demands answers from Barclays over Jes Staley's Epstein ties
Senator Elizabeth Warren has sent a letter to Barclays chair demanding urgent answers about the bank's failure to investigate former CEO Jes Staley's decades-long relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
US Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee, has demanded urgent answers from Barclays over what she called the bank's "apparent failure to meaningfully investigate" ties between its former CEO, Jes Staley, and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In a letter addressed to Barclays chair Nigel Higgins and co-signed by Congress members Ro Khanna and Raja Krishnamoorthi, Warren gave the bank two weeks to respond to a series of questions about how it handled information on Staley's links to Epstein. The questions included whether Barclays conducted any reviews into deficiencies in its executive hiring process that allowed the board to hire a CEO who had extensive professional and personal ties to a convicted sex offender.
The lawmakers raised concerns about information from a UK court hearing last year, where Staley unsuccessfully tried to overturn a regulatory ban from the British banking industry. The hearing revealed that Higgins admitted he had not asked Staley about his last contact with Epstein before telling the Financial Conduct Authority that the last contact was "well before" Staley joined Barclays.
"It appears that neither you nor any other member of the board conducted any deeper due diligence to verify Staley's claims and simply took him at his word," the letter said. "It is unclear what specific actions, if any, Barclays took to investigate Staley and Epstein's personal ties."
The letter stated that Barclays' apparent failure to investigate the relationship raises significant governance questions about the bank's ability to hold senior executives accountable for wrongdoing. The lawmakers also warned that the bank's privilege to operate in the US, where it holds about $200bn in assets, depends on the character and fitness of its management.
The letter was sent hours before Staley was due to testify in a closed-door hearing before the House Oversight Committee, on which Khanna and Krishnamoorthi sit.
Staley first met Epstein in 2000 while head of JP Morgan's private bank. He became CEO of Barclays in 2015 but was forced to step down in 2021 after UK regulators began investigating his relationship with Epstein. Staley was later banned from the UK financial sector for downplaying those ties, and he lost £18m in pay and bonuses from Barclays as a result.
A Barclays spokesperson said: "The UK regulator concluded that Barclays was misled by Jes Staley. We conducted an investigation based on the information that was available to us at the time. Since then, new information has emerged that was not available to Barclays that demonstrates Mr Staley misled Barclays and many others as to the nature of the relationship with Epstein. That information relates to activities that predated his employment at Barclays."
