US senator wants urgent answers from Barclays over Jes Staley’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein

US Senator Wants Urgent Answers from Barclays Over Jes Staley Epstein Links Wanderstayfinder.com – Senator Elizabeth Warren has formally requested

US Senator Wants Urgent Answers from Barclays Over Jes Staley Epstein Links

Wanderstayfinder.com – Senator Elizabeth Warren has formally requested urgent answers from Barclays regarding what she described as the bank’s “apparent failure to meaningfully investigate” connections between former chief executive Jes Staley and the late Jeffrey Epstein. In a confidential letter addressed to Barclays chair Nigel Higgins, Warren, the most senior Democrat on the US Senate banking committee, expressed concern that the bank failed to uncover a decades-long relationship despite supposedly examining Staley’s ties to Epstein.

Key Questions Raised in the Letter

The US senator wants urgent answers through a comprehensive set of questions sent to Barclays, with a two-week deadline for responses. The letter, co-signed by Congress members Ro Khanna and Raja Krishnamoorthi, addresses multiple concerns about how the bank handled information regarding Staley’s relationship with Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges. Warren emphasized that it remained “deeply unclear how Barclays, supposedly investigating Staley’s connection to Epstein, failed to uncover this decades-long relationship.”

Among the critical questions, the lawmakers asked whether Barclays conducted reviews into “deficiencies” in its executive hiring process that “allowed the board to hire a CEO who held extensive professional and personal ties to a convicted sex offender.” The concerns were heightened by information from a UK court hearing last year, where Staley unsuccessfully attempted to overturn the regulator’s decision to ban him from British banking four years after stepping down as Barclays boss.

“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 stated, referring to exchanges between the executive and board members during Staley’s tenure.

The US senator wants urgent answers about specific actions Barclays took to investigate the personal ties between Staley and Epstein. The lawmakers noted that the episode raised significant governance questions about the bank’s management. “Barclays’s apparent failure to meaningfully investigate or address Staley’s relationship with Epstein raises significant governance questions regarding the bank’s ability to hold senior executives accountable for wrongdoing,” the letter concluded.

Additionally, the letter signatories warned that holding local banking licences and operating in the US was a “privilege” contingent on the “ongoing character and fitness of management.” Barclays maintains “extensive” operations in the United States with approximately $200bn (£150bn) in assets. The correspondence arrived hours before Staley was scheduled for a closed-door hearing by the House Oversight Committee, where co-signatories Khanna and Krishnamoorthi both serve.

Staley first met Epstein in 2000 after becoming head of JP Morgan’s private bank, where Epstein was a client. He assumed the role of Barclays chief executive in 2015 but was compelled to step down in 2021 following a City regulators investigation into the relationship between the two men. Staley ultimately received a ban from the UK’s financial sector for minimizing those ties, which Barclays had endorsed in its 2019 letter to the Financial Conduct Authority.

During Staley’s unsuccessful court battle last year to overturn his banking ban, intimate details of the friendship emerged. The former Barclays boss also forfeited £18m in pay and bonuses as a result of the ruling. A Barclays spokesperson explained: “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.”