JPMorgan Chase fights attempts by lawyers to question CEO Jamie Dimon

JPMorgan Chase is resisting attempts by lawyers to question its CEO Jamie Dimon under oath in a lawsuit over the bank’s decision to retain Jeffrey Epstein as a client for 15 years.

At the same time, the investment bank this week agreed to remove one of its chief executive lieutenants under oath.

According to court documents filed Tuesday, the bank argued said Dimon was not a “due deponent” — but instead they agreed to find a March date for an impeachment of Mary Erdoes.

Erdoes is one of the top executives of the bank – and is currently the head of JPMorgan’s wealth and wealth management division – where sex offender financier Epstein was a client.

And according to the FT, JPMorgan also agreed to allow lawyers to interview Mary Casey. She worked as a private banker in the period before Epstein was dropped.

Last month, lawyers begged the court to allow JPMorgan to hand over documents they believed would detail Dimon’s alleged accomplice communications in which he decided to continue banking Epstein despite his allegations of bawdy human trafficking.

This comes just months after a new lawsuit was filed by the Attorney General of the US Virgin Islands accusing JPMorgan Chase of “turning a blind eye” to the heinous sex crimes committed by Jeffrey Epstein.

But now the lender claims that Dimon is “irrelevant” to the US Virgin Islands case. They added, “he was not involved in any decisions regarding Epstein’s account.”

In the lawsuit, USVI AG accuses Denise George Chase of “knowingly providing and pulling the levers by which recruiters and victims were paid.” The complaint was filed in Manhattan District Court.

George further alleges that Chase ignored the truth surrounding Epstein, such as his 2008 Florida conviction for procuring a child for prostitution, to keep him as a client, The New York Times reports.

The bank kept Epstein as a client between 1998 and 2013 before finally cutting ties.

For years, the secretive financier was based on his private island, Little St. James in the Virgin Islands. He was found dead in his Manhattan prison cell in 2019 awaiting trial on child sexual abuse and human trafficking charges. The official cause of death was suicide.

The new lawsuit explicitly states that Epstein used his home on Little St. James for his sexual crimes. In June, Epstein’s ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for trafficking minors for sex.

Epstein first became a client of Chase in 1998. Since his death, there have been numerous reports that bank executives wanted to keep Epstein on board because of his connections to some of the richest people in the world.

Part of the lawsuit reads, “Human trafficking was the primary activity of Epstein’s accounts at JPMorgan.”

AG George said the lawsuit was part of an “outgoing effort” to hold accountability to those who helped facilitate Epstein’s actions.

The indictment goes on to charge Chase with concealing “cash and cash transactions arousing suspicion of a criminal enterprise whose currency was sexual servitude” from young girls.

The damages sought by the U.S. Virgin Islands are not specified in the lawsuit.

In January, another banker was charged with “personally observing” Jeffrey Epstein molesting young women, according to a victim’s lawsuit filed against JP Morgan.

Jes Staley, 66, resigned as CEO of UK bank Barclays in November 2021 after the bank said it was ‘disappointed’ with the outcome of a report on his ties to the convicted sex offender.

He has now been named in a lawsuit filed by one of Epstein’s victims, a woman known only as Jane Doe 1.

She is suing JP Morgan, where Staley was CEO until 2013 and had Epstein as a client. The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, alleges that Staley knew of Epstein’s trafficking of women and witnessed him abusing them.

According to the FT, Tuesday’s new court documents include allegations that Staley was personally involved in the decision to retain Epstein as a client in 2008.

This happened after the financier was arrested for soliciting a minor in Florida, lawyers said.

The attorneys cited an internal JPMorgan exchange that said, “Jes Staley consulted with Stephen Cutler and it was decided to keep him. . . as a customer.’

Cutler, who was part of JPMorgan’s general counsel at the time, was “also included in at least one rapid response meeting regarding new information about Epstein’s trafficking.”