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The chair of Barclays has said he did not ask Jes Staley whether he was still emailing or calling Jeffrey Epstein before declaring to the regulator that the last contact between the ex-boss and the child sex offender was “well before” he joined the bank, a court has heard.
Nigel Higgins admitted that he did not inquire about the kind of contact that the pair had, nor the exact date of their last meeting, before attempting to reassure the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) that he had no concerns about the nature of Staley and Epstein’s relationship.
The FCA is alleging that, while the pair’s last in-person meeting was in April 2015, the two men continued to speak to each other, including via email, in the lead-up to Staley’s appointment as Barclays chief executive in October 2015.
“I was told in interview with the FCA (without being shown the underlying evidence) that, in October 2015, Mr Staley was in email and telephone contact with Mr Epstein,” Higgins said in a witness statement submitted to the upper tribunal. Higgins took over as chair two years before Staley stepped down in late 2021.
“I was not aware of that at the time the response to the FCA’s question was being drafted. I did not ask Mr Staley the date of his last contact with Mr Epstein,” Higgins said in the witness statement.
Higgins added that he also did not “recollect specifically asking” about when their last meeting had been. Epstein died in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking underage girls for sex.
However, an October 2019 letter from Barclays to the FCA, which is now at the centre of a legal battle at the upper tribunal, said Epstein and Staley “did not have a close relationship” and that Staley’s “last contact with Mr Epstein was well before he joined Barclays in 2015”.
FCA lawyers allege its subsequent investigation, triggered by the contents of 1,200 emails obtained from Staley’s former employer JP Morgan, found that the pair were “indeed close” and had a relationship that “went beyond one that was professional in nature”.
Higgins’s comments came as he appeared at the Rolls Building in London for cross-examination by Staley’s lawyers, who are trying to overturn the FCA’s decision to issue a lifetime ban on the bank’s former chief executive for allegedly misleading the regulator over the depth of his relationship with the later financier and child sex offender.
They are arguing that members of the bank’s board – which includes Higgins – were aware of the extent of his ties with the late financier.
Higgins told the court that he had asked Staley about whether he was involved in Epstein’s criminal activity, even before the FCA approached Barclays for information in August 2019.
“I do recall using words to the effect of ‘Jes, I just have to ask you, because it is unfortunately my job, you just have to tell me, is there anything about you and these girls?’ He told me that there was not,” Higgins said.
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Higgins said that he would have made more “in-depth” queries about Staley’s relationship with Epstein had he realised that the pair’s ties were not merely “business related.”
Higgins agreed with Staley’s lawyers when they said the former Barclays boss wrote “affectionate” emails that would seem “odd to an Englishman,” as the court was shown an email written by Staley to Epstein from a hot tub.
That email, from January 2009, read: “So when all hell breaks lose [sic] and the world is crumbling, I will come here and be at peace, presently I’m in the hot tub with a glass of white wine,” the email, presented in court, said. It continued: “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.”
Evidence presented to the court last week showed that former Bank of England governor and incoming Canadian prime minister Mark Carney raised concerns about some of the emails in the JP Morgan cache, during an December 2019 meeting with Higgins and Andrew Bailey. That included one email referring to Staley having been in a hot tub. Bailey, the current Bank governor and former FCA chief, appeared at the hearings last week.
