© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Jamie Dimon, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., speaks during the event Chase for Business The Experience – Miami hosted by JP Morgan Chase Bank for small business owners at The Wharf in Miami, Florida,
By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -JPMorgan Chase & Co’s former general counsel Stephen Cutler wrote in a 2011 email that the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein should not be a client of the bank, according to a transcript of a deposition of Chief Executive Jamie Dimon seen by Reuters.
Dimon said in the deposition he was not aware of the email at the time but “I know it today.”
The largest U.S. bank faces lawsuits seeking damages by women who claim that Epstein sexually abused them, and by the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the late financier had a home.
Epstein was a JPMorgan (NYSE:) client from 2000 to 2013, remaining so after pleading guilty in 2008 to a Florida state prostitution charge.
In Dimon’s May 26 deposition, he was asked about the email Cutler sent to other executives, including former private banking chief Jes Staley and Mary Erdoes, now head of asset and wealth management, calling Epstein “not a person we should do business with, period.”
“This is not an honorable person in any way,” Cutler wrote. “He should not be a client.”
The email was read by a lawyer for the Virgin Islands during questioning, according to the transcript. Reuters has not seen the email itself.
“Had the firm believed he was engaged in an ongoing sex trafficking operation, Epstein would not have been retained as client,” a JPMorgan spokesperson said in a statement. “In hindsight, we regret he was ever a client.”
Epstein died in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. New York City’s medical examiner called the death a suicide.
