I watched banks protect their Epsteins. Now Congress is coming for JPMorgan

JPMorgan shares fell after CNBC reported that Senate Democrats plan to investigate the bank’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. From the syndicate desk, none of this was surprising. The client who makes the fees always had the leverage.

This morning JPMorgan Chase sold off roughly three percent on that report. Senate Democrats, once they take the gavels, intend to ask how high the Epstein decisions went — including to Mary Callahan Erdoes, who runs the bank’s asset and wealth management division. The Kobeissi Letter flagged the move as it happened.

JPMorgan told Reuters it regrets any association with Epstein and “did not help him commit his crimes.” It has blamed former investment-banking chief Jes Staley for concealing or failing to report criminal activity related to Epstein. Staley has denied knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. That fight is about to get a committee room and a subpoena.

I wrote about this three years ago, when JPMorgan paid $290 million to settle a class action by Epstein’s victims and another $75 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands rather than face a trial. The check looked large next to a bank that earned $49.6 billion in 2023. The settlements bought the absence of a verdict. They never bought silence. Here is why none of this surprised anyone who has worked the desk.

What I saw from the desk

I know how the machine works because I sat inside it. On the fixed-income syndicate desk at Citigroup — New York, London, Hong Kong — we facilitated horrendous behavior for nefarious clients as a matter of good business. We fulfilled requests for girls and drugs. We added unnecessary cities to roadshows, paid for by the banks, solely for the nightlife. Bankers in New York invented excuses to drag clients onto Asian investor roadshows just to show them a good, and exceptionally deviant, time. Wedding rings were optional. I've written about what a roadshow really looks like — the private jets, the hotels, the extracurriculars — in The worst private plane trip of all time.

A close friend who ran leveraged finance at a major U.S. bank was reprimanded for refusing a CEO’s request to take the deal team to a late-night “karaoke bar,” which everyone understood to mean something else. Future business was on the line, he was told, and the competition was eager to oblige. The venues dressed the receipts up as expensive dinners so they could be expensed. Participate, or lose the mandate.

One episode stays with me. A top-tier U.S. bank was leading a debut dollar bond for one of China’s largest property developers. Gross fees: about $10 million. The real prize was the IPO mandate that would follow — $50 million to $60 million. On the roadshow, the founder, very drunk, assaulted a young female analyst twice. She complained. The bank did not walk. It sent her home, took her off the deal team, and quietly reconsidered her future assignments. The client kept his bankers. She lost her place.

That is the Epstein calculation at a smaller scale. When the fees concentrate in a handful of founders and billionaires, the rainmaker has leverage over the person who raises a concern. Compliance is a cost centre. The client is a profit centre.

Every bank has a roster

And that calculation is not a JPMorgan specialty. Every bank has a roster of Jeffrey Epsteins. They need them. They support them. They make each other rich.

JPMorgan kept banking Epstein for years after he pleaded guilty, in 2008, to procuring a minor for prostitution — amid allegations he had sexually abused teenage girls — and after he served 13 months in a Florida jail, much of it on work release. They are hardly an outlier.

Epstein’s December 2010 dinner at his Manhattan townhouse, thrown for Prince Andrew shortly after that release, was covered at the time by the New York Post and later confirmed in Justice Department emails. Guests named in that reporting:

(Accounts of the guest list have varied slightly over the years; those names are the ones that recur in the contemporaneous and documentary record.)

Go to the south of France, Dubai, or Mykonos and look at the “yacht girls.” I spent my analyst bonus every summer in St. Tropez. Now it’s all on Instagram — the depravity on the yachts and in the clubs, a total disregard for money, accountability, and societal norms. These are the billionaires who never appear on rich lists. In my experience on the Street, that world was full of clients of Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs. The dinner guest list was the polished face of the same client culture.

The starkest proof that the roster pays is not some fringe boutique. Jes Staley kept Epstein as a client at JPMorgan — and the relationship did not sideline him. It propelled him. He went on to run Barclays.

The banker who kept the account open

Staley met Epstein around 2000, when he ran JPMorgan’s private bank. He left in 2013, took the Barclays chief-executive job in 2015, and stepped down in 2021 after Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority opened an investigation into the relationship. House Oversight Chair James Comer, after interviewing Staley behind closed doors in July, said the former executive had encouraged JPMorgan to keep Epstein as a client.

JPMorgan’s own filings in the Virgin Islands case place Staley at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse repeatedly between 2004 and 2011, at Zorro Ranch in 2009, and on Little St. James in January 2011. The Virgin Islands government cited a November 1, 2009 email it says Staley sent from the island while Epstein was incarcerated: “Presently, I’m in the hot tub with a glass of white wine. This is an amazing place. Truly amazing. Next time, we’re here together. I owe you much. And I deeply appreciate our friendship. I have few so profound.”

Those filings also describe Staley pressing colleagues to keep the account. A banker who said she no longer wanted to cover Epstein later testified that Staley replied he knew and trusted Epstein — and would trust him with his daughters. In 2011, those filings say, Staley told the bank’s then-general counsel that Epstein “had turned a page,” “had paid his debt to society,” and that JPMorgan ought to keep banking him.

“That was fun. Say hi to Snow White,” Staley emailed Epstein in July 2010, according to court filings. “What character would you like next?” Epstein replied. “Beauty and the Beast,” Staley wrote back. Epstein: “Well one side is available.”

No wonder JPMorgan settled rather than face a trial.

In a closed-door interview with U.S. lawmakers this summer, Staley denied having sex with a woman in a Snow White costume and denied that he and Epstein used Disney princesses as code names for women. He said he may have seen her in Epstein’s apartment — and that the sighting prompted the email — but that he was not with her.

The regulator’s case turned on a 2019 letter Barclays sent the FCA, approved by Staley, saying he did not have a close relationship with Epstein. The emails told a different story. In them, the FCA said, Staley called Epstein one of his “deepest” and “most cherished” friends. In June 2025, a UK tribunal upheld his ban from senior roles in British finance. Staley has denied wrongdoing and said he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.

Leon Black’s $158 million question

If Staley is the banker JPMorgan points to, Leon Black is the client Senate Finance keeps circling. Apollo’s independent review by Dechert LLP found that Black paid Epstein $158 million between 2012 and 2017 for what Black contended was tax and estate-planning advice, plus two loans totaling $30.5 million. Senator Ron Wyden’s August 2026 staff report put the transfers higher — about $170 million — and called Black Epstein’s largest source of funding over that period. Black’s attorney called Wyden’s assertions “outrageous and false.”

Dechert noted that Epstein had “no formal tax training,” and that his advice was vetted by Black’s other advisors. The firm found no evidence Black was involved in Epstein’s crimes. Black has said he cut ties over a fee dispute and paid for legitimate work.

In January 2023, Black paid the U.S. Virgin Islands $62.5 million to settle potential Epstein-related claims, denying liability. He has also spent years in civil court over sexual-misconduct allegations he denies; several suits have been dismissed or barred. In November 2026 he sued Rep. Robert Garcia for defamation over comments tying him to Epstein’s crimes. Garcia’s office did not immediately comment.

The put that expired

Back inside JPMorgan, the people who could have closed the account did not. In 2023, Erdoes testified she knew as early as 2006 that Epstein was accused of paying cash to have underage girls brought to his home. He had been a client since 1998. Jamie Dimon said Erdoes had the authority to cut him off. She did not take that step until 2013.

Look at the settlements the way a risk committee would. Pay a known premium. Cap an unknown loss. Skip the jury. For a bank, that is usually a good trade. What it cannot buy is a statute, a midterm, or a ranking member who becomes a chairman.

The settlement was a put option on a quiet archive. The archive is public now. The stock moved this morning because the market finally priced the next hearing.

Banks claim this kind of behavior is a deviation from the norm. But as someone who sat above the Chinese Wall, as the bridge between Investment Banking and Sales & Trading, doing deals with every single bank on Wall Street, I saw it all; this was commonplace.

Deviance was encouraged.

Banks also claim these anecdotes are “a thing of the past.” In fairness, this is broadly true, except in the Emerging Markets, where societal norms are “different” and most of the CEOs are billionaire founders. Too much money is at stake.

The culture might have evolved, but the people haven’t changed.

Many of the people I worked with are still there, albeit in much more senior and influential positions.

First published by The Graze, September 27, 2023. Reporting on today’s JPMorgan probe: CNBC. Additional reporting: Reuters, the FCA, the UK Upper Tribunal, Dechert/Apollo, Senate Finance (Wyden), House Oversight transcripts, and court filings in U.S. Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan.