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Jes Staley’s legal team complained on Thursday that the banker had been subject to “public humiliation” during a legal case in London concerning his ties with Jeffrey Epstein who, according to the former boss of Barclays, had put his marriage in danger.
The American banker insisted that he was “not there to induce anyone” in a legal challenge that he brought to cancel a ban and a fine that the British authorities imposed on him for having allegedly allowed Barclays to mislead the regulator about his relationship with the late sex offender.
Staley, 68, testified for a fourth day in a court in London, who heard this week that he had had sex with one of the employees of Jeffrey Epstein in an apartment in New York belonging to the brother of the deceased financial.
His lawyer Robert Smith KC told court that the banker’s legal team was “extremely concerned” after lawyers acting for the Financial Conduct Authority interviewed Staley on the consensual meeting.
“I crossed the Atlantic to be with this court,” said Staley later under the counter-examination of the lawyer for the Financial Conduct Authority. “I could have stayed at home.”
“I was honest in such a way that I put my marriage in danger in recent days.”
The FCA, which prohibited Staley from occupying management positions in the United Kingdom finance in 2023, underlined throughout the procedure according to which he “does not seek to embarrass” the banker and that he did not accuse him of being involved or to know the crime of Epstein.
The case of the watchdog is rather than Staley minimized its links with Epstein, and was not quite frank with the officials.
However, Smith said that “Mr. Staley’s public humiliation” during the sexual meeting in Manhattan had “hit the press” and that the FCA “should have achieved”. “The damage was caused when this question was asked,” he said.
Leigh-Ann Mulcahy KC, for the FCA, said it in Staley on Wednesday that he “had sex with a woman” at “Epstein’s brother’s apartment on the east of the 66th street?”, To which he replied “yes”.
The court learned that Staley declared in a deposition linked to separate procedures in the United States that he did not know that it was the apartment of Epstein’s brother at the time, but the fact now. Epstein did not know the meeting, Staley told court.
Mulcahy said that she had dealt with the question as “enough and sensitive as possible”. “We refute the suggestion that it was done without notice,” she added.
She said that the FCA did not seek to invade the private life of Staley but to establish the links between him and Epstein, since he disputes the two had a close personal relationship.
The case focuses on two statements that Barclays made to regulators in a 2019 letter, which Staley approved. The bank said that its managing director “had not had a close relationship” with Epstein, and that Staley’s last contact with him was “long before” Staley had joined the British bank.
The banker was interviewed at length on Thursday for his contacts with Epstein, who, according to the FCA, continued indirectly after having become general manager of Barclays using his daughter as “vehicle”.
Asking Staley about Barclays’ letter, Mulcahy put him to the former managing director that “the only involved person who knew the real position with all the facts, isn’t it?”
Staley said he had followed the instructions of Barclays’ legal adviser to define “contact” as “physical presence”.
He said he had “broken” the relationship by taking Barclays’ work and insisted that his daughter had not acted as an intermediary.
