De New York Times brengt weer een flink artikel, nu over de financiële kant. Het liegt er niet om, blijkbaar had Epstein zoveel connecties met ultra-rijke families dat zijn reputatie voor lief werd genomen.
JPMorgan Kept Jeffrey Epstein as a Client Despite Internal Warnings (NYT)
quote:
When compliance officers at JPMorgan Chase conducted a sweep of their wealthy clients a decade ago, they recommended that the bank cut its ties to the financier Jeffrey E. Epstein because his accounts posed unacceptable legal and reputational risks.
Yet Mr. Epstein, who had been charged with sex crimes and pleaded guilty in 2008 to solicitation of prostitution, remained a JPMorgan client until 2013.
The main reason, according to six former senior executives and other bank employees familiar with the matter, was that Mary C. Erdoes, one of JPMorgan’s highest-ranking executives, intervened to keep him as a client.
Part of her rationale was that Mr. Epstein played a lucrative role recruiting new customers to JPMorgan’s private-banking division, which caters to ultra-wealthy people and families, the six employees said. That made him an especially coveted client.
The episode is another example of how powerful institutions and individuals, eager to profit from Mr. Epstein and his network of wealthy acquaintances, looked past his criminal history and sex offender status. As a result, he managed to retain crucial business connections even as, prosecutors said in a federal indictment last month, he engaged in the sexual trafficking of girls as young as 14.
Mr. Epstein, a JPMorgan client for about 15 years, is being held without bail in a Manhattan jail. He has pleaded not guilty to the sex-trafficking charges. His lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.
Joseph Evangelisti, a JPMorgan spokesman, disputed The New York Times’s reporting. “Mary would never overrule our compliance team or other controls functions to retain a customer,” he said. “She has only one recollection of formally meeting with the customer, which was the day she fired him as a client.”
Ms. Erdoes, viewed within JPMorgan as a potential successor to Jamie Dimon, the longtime chief executive, was not alone in making the case for Mr. Epstein inside the bank.
James E. Staley, who ran the bank’s asset-management division, which included the private bank, from 2001 to 2009, built JPMorgan’s relationship with Mr. Epstein.
Het artikel gaat nog verder, ook weer over Leslie Wexner, Madoff en de Deutsche Bank, waar in mei nog een
inval was vanwege connecties met de Panama papers.
quote:
After being expelled by JPMorgan, Mr. Epstein moved his business to Deutsche Bank, where he opened dozens of accounts. Compliance officers at the German bank raised concerns about Mr. Epstein and transactions that they regarded as suspicious, and they tried to get the bank to end its relationship with him. Executives overruled their concerns.
Deutsche Bank stopped doing business with Mr. Epstein in June 2019.
Ms. Erdoes, who joined JPMorgan in 1996, remains in charge of the asset-management division, which has more than $2 trillion in assets. She also has a seat on JPMorgan’s powerful operating committee.