EPSTEIN S BEST PAL, MANDELSTON USED HIS POLITICAL POWER TO INFLUENCE UK GOV POLICY FOR THE BENEFIT OF JP MORGAN
TELEGRAPH INVESTIGATION SHOWS EPSTEIN AND MANDELSON AND PR ANDREW WORKED TOGETHER TO PENETRATE CHINA S BANKING SECTOR WITH MANIPULATORY INSTRUMENTS
EPSTEIN S POTENTIAL CONTROLLER NETANAYU , BOMBED QATAR, ATTACKED GAZA AIDE SHIPS WITH DRONES
IS ACCUSED OF TRYING TO START WW3 TO DIVERT FROM THE BLACKMAIL SCANDAL IN THE USA AND UK
A POTENTIAL FALSE FLAG DRONE ATTACK AGAINST POLAND HAS BEEN USED TO CALL FOR NATO INTERVENTION, CONSCRIPTION, MARTIAL LAW CLAMPDOWN ON WESTERN PUBLIC IN REVOLT AT THEIR EPSTEIN RUN GOVERNMENTS
LACKING AIR DEFENCE MISSILES, NATO WILL COLLAPSE VERY SOON IN ANY WAR WITH RUSSIA AND ITS ALLIES
PRECISION HYPERSONIC MISSILES USED TO GREAT EFFECT BY IRAN TO DEVASTATE NETANYAHU S POWER BASE AND TEL AVIV
WILL JP MORGAN, JAMIE DIMON S BEDFORD RESIDENCE MAY BE ON THE LIST OF HYPERSONIC GLIDE MISSILE TARGETS ALONG WITH OTHER LOCATIONS OF THE ELITE CONTROLLERS
TENSIONS COME AS PROTESTS SWEEP FRANCE, SUGGESTING FRENCH ARE FAR MORE LIKELY TO TURN THEIR WEAPONS ON THEIR GOV THAN ON RUSSIA IF THEY EVER GET THEM THROUGH WW3, CONSCRIPTION
A close associate of Epstein and the UK's current ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, used his political power to influence government policy for the enrichment of JP Morgan, UK media report.
The report will fuel fears that JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon have helped set up a ring of blackmailed politicians whom they can use to steer policies for the benefit of JP Morgan and close associates like Bill Gates.
The NYT reported that JP Morgan, whose CEO is Jamie Dimon, funded and enabled Epstein and his blackmail scheme.
Keir Starmer gave strong backing to Mandelson despite the revealation that he kept a particularly close relationship with Epstein, Prince Andrew, as well as with Evelyn and Lynne de Rotschild, and used his government position to further their agenda.
Mandelson said he believes further "embarrassing" correspondence between himself and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein will be published.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yevwvvneyo?amp;at_campaign=rss
The revelations come as Thomas Massie on the brink of getting the 218 signatures he needs for a discharge petition to force a vote on a bill to the release of all the Epstein files.
However, is not clear how Congress can compel the White House to release the files short of adding criminal penalties for no compliance in a bill.
The issue of whether the Trump administration is de facto being steered by entities like JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, and other Epstein associates like Mandelson, Netanyahu and Barak comes amid growing criticism of Trump s handling of the economy and a disastrous jobs report.
Jamie Dimon s role in determining the policies of the Trump admin and especially his trade tariff chaos needs to be examined in the light of the latest shocking job figures, indicating the USA is heading for a deep recession.
Although a federal judge has ruled that Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook can stay in her post while challenging Trump over his bid to fire her to get control of the Fed, the Fed s independence looks set to be eroded sooner or later meaning hyperinflation is on the horizon.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/09/fed-governor-lisa-cook-trump-lawsuit
JP Morgan was the driving force behind the privatization of the Fed in 1913. One of the key first Fed board members was Paul Warburg whose brother Max Warburg helped fund Hitler and the Nazi war machine at the Reichsbank.
JP Morgan made a fortune during WW1 and WW2 giving the US gov basically its own money to pay for the wars and charging interest for it as well as by investing in various war related programme.
It may be Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan now hope war will be their get out of jail card as the focus turns on the Epstein blackmail ring.
An alleged attack by Russian drones on Poland has sparked claims for NATO intervention just as Israel has attacked targets in Qatar and
However, in 2025, Jame Dimon and JP Morgan have miscalculated.
This time around the people of countries like the USA and France are far more likely to use their weapons against their puppet governments run by ex Rothschild banker, Macron, seeking to impose more austerity to pay the private banksters the interest for money which should be issued for free by the French government, if they are conscripted.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/09/10/pro-palestine-protesters-trump-dines-washington-dc/
The Sun reports that "FRANCE has plunged into street carnage with outraged protesters setting up blazing roadblocks as President Emmanuel Macron's government hangs by a thread.
At least 200 arrests have been made nationwide amid the "Block Everything" campaign - which is aiming to disrupt transport links and bring the country to a grinding halt.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/36642841/paris-riot-cops-clash-macron-government-crisis/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNs14dcGOCw
https://www.ledevoir.com/monde/europe/915705/sebastien-lecornu-nomme-chef-gouvernement-francais
In addition, hypersonic glide missiles make the entire elite who run the Western governments, largely through blackmail, vulnerable as Netanyahu found out when he had to flee Tel Aviv during the ill judged 12 day war, as missiles rained down on strategic targets including the Knesset, Microsoft HQ, Haifia and Mossad.
Thanks to the elite s being especially brainy as we now know from Kaja Kallas, the Russians and Chinese know every detail about who they are, their methods and objectives in Greek prosecutor probes capturing George Soros, investor in JP Morgan as committing crimes.
With few air defence missiles left, JP Morgans sky scraper on Park Avenue in NY and Jamie Dimon s residence in Bedford will be easy targets
From media
From The Telegraph
The pair worked together on the launch of the NSPCC’s Full Stop campaign against child cruelty that was launched in 1999 and according to reports the pair became regular dining companions. When Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and Lynn Forester, herself a friend of Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein, married in December 2000, it was reported that Prince Andrew and Mandelson were invited to be witnesses.
...
Emails made public through a court case cast a light on discussions and meetings between Lord Mandelson and Epstein.
The US Virgin Islands sued JP Morgan, America’s largest bank, and its one-time head of private client banking Jes Staley for effectively enabling Epstein to finance sex trafficking.
Epstein had been a private client of JP Morgan’s from 1998 until 2013 and Staley, who would go on to run Barclays Bank, was a close associate. The court case, settled by JP Morgan at a cost of $75m but with no admission of liability, threw up thousands of emails between Staley and Epstein that includes correspondence with Mandelson.
..
The emails likely only represent a fraction of what might have passed between Lord Mandelson and Epstein, according to sources.
They clearly don’t present a full picture of Lord Mandelson’s dealing with Epstein, but they do shed light and behind the scenes, it looks at times at least – as if Epstein might just be pulling a few strings. Epstein died in 2019, but his influence was still palpable.
At the same time that Lord Mandelson was being readmitted onto the public stage as Britain’s ambassador to the US, the most prestigious of all diplomatic postings, Staley was being banned by the UK’s financial regulator over his association with Epstein – and failing to disclose fully that association.
Friends of Staley tell The Telegraph: “No one is saying Jes wasn’t a friend of Jeffrey Epstein but Peter Mandelson was far closer. How Peter Mandelson has ended up as ambassador is beyond me. They were really close. I have no doubt about it.”
Prosecutors in the US Virgin islands have described Epstein’s relationship with Lord Mandelson as “particularly close”, referencing emails and diary entries obtained under disclosure from Staley as evidence. The emails exchanged between Staley and Epstein including references to Mandelson or else emails forwarded on from him.
They suggest behind the scenes that Government policy was being discussed between Epstein and Lord Mandelson. The Telegraph has analysed the emails in the context of what was going on at the time.
Epstein may have been influencing decision making in Whitehall during Mandelson’s return to power.
,,,
A fortnight later, Lord Mandelson was taking up residence at Epstein’s seven-storey townhouse in New York – called his “Manhattan lair” by the New York Times. In an email sent prior to his stay, Epstein invites Jes Staley to come and bend Lord Mandelson’s ear. He suggests he might want to bring JP Morgan’s all powerful chief executive officer Jamie Dimon with him.
...
Mandelson and Epstein appear to have contemplated a scheme for JP Morgan to buy a key asset from the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), a bank that was taken under Government control in the wake of the financial crash.
JP Morgan bought the commodities trader Sempra, a joint venture between RBOS and Sempra Energy, for $1.7bn in February 2010.
...
Mandelson hits the ground running in the weeks after leaving office. At the end of May, he writes to Epstein, urging him to get JP Morgan involved in a conference in Shanghai he is attending the next month.
“This is thing I am speaking to in Shanghai. If you can open the attachments you will see that the entire Chinese banking fraternity is attending. Isn’t it something that JPM should be represented at if they want to spread their wings in China?” Epstein takes Mandelson up on it. “I think he is right. You should read the attachments,” he tells Jes Staley.
...
A week before the Shanghai conference takes place, Lord Mandelson enjoys a briefing from Peter Scher, vice chairman at JP Morgan, and who had been a lead negotiator on US-China World Trade Organization talks under president Bill Clinton, another close friend of Epstein’s. “How did Peter M like his meeting with Peter Scher?” Staley asks Epstein in an email sent on June 21.
The emails suggest Epstein had helped set Lord Mandelson up with America’s top China trade and banking expert.
At Lujiazui Forum in Shanghai held in the last weekend of June, Mandelson then gave a speech in praise of China’s banking industry.
Mandelson, Epstein and a mining deal
Lord Mandelson travelled to Congo-Brazzaville in the autumn of 2010 where he got himself involved in a mining deal backed by JP Morgan. Epstein was being kept abreast of his movements. Epstein told Staley that Mandelson would be back in London in November. Meanwhile Lord Mandelson gives Staley a full briefing on his activities in the central African republic. Staley then passes the email on to Epstein. Lord Mandelson appears from the email to be trying to put together a mining deal.
,,,
Ever keen to help a friend, Epstein urges Staley to get Lord Mandelson involved with Cazenove, a traditional London stockbroker that in 2010 was fully taken over by JP Morgan. “Would it make sense to have peter have a relationship with cazanov,” writes Epstein to Staley on October 8 2010. Less than a fortnight later, Epstein informs Staley of Lord Mandelson’s movements. “petie is just back from russia and now in London,” he writes. A day later on October 21, Staley is understood to have met Lord Mandelson.
...
Mandelson continued to seek help from Epstein. In 2013, he asks Epstein if he would assist him with a background check on an Israeli political consultant. Sent from his Global Counsel email, Mandelson requests that Epstein contact Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister and ask him his opinion on the consultant he named as Asaf Eisin. The email was obtained through a leak of thousands of Barak’s emails.
Eisin is a close friend and adviser to Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic. In the email to Epstein sent on September 1 2013, Mandelson writes: “Can you ask Ehud whether he knows/thinks of this Israeli guy living in London. He says he worked on political campaigns for Ehid. Thanks. Peter”. The email is signed off “Lord Mandelson, Chairman”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/10/emails-mandelson-epstein-into-labour/
How JPMorgan Enabled the Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein
A Times investigation found that America’s leading bank spent years supporting — and profiting from — the notorious sex offender, ignoring red flags, suspicious activity and concerned executives.
Credit...Photo illustration by Tyler Comrie and Hannah Whitaker for The New York Times
David EnrichMatthew GoldsteinJessica Silver-Greenberg
By David EnrichMatthew Goldstein and Jessica Silver-Greenberg
The reporters, who started investigating Epstein more than six years ago, reviewed more than 13,000 of pages of legal and financial records for this article.
Sept. 8, 2025
One day in October 2011, Jeffrey Epstein walked into the cavernous lobby of 270 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. The skyscraper was home to JPMorgan Chase, arguably the world’s most prestigious bank. The sex offender — who barely a year earlier was under house arrest after serving 13 months in a Florida jail — was ushered onto an elevator and whisked to a top floor where Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive, and the rest of the senior leadership had their offices.
Listen to this article, read by Malcolm Hillgartner
Epstein had long been a treasured customer at JPMorgan. His accounts were brimming with more than $200 million. He generated millions of dollars in revenue for the bank, landing him atop an internal list of major money makers. He helped JPMorgan orchestrate an important acquisition. He introduced executives to men who would become lucrative clients, like the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and to global leaders, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. He helped executives troubleshoot crises and strategize about global opportunities.
But a growing group of employees worried that JPMorgan’s association with a man who had pleaded guilty to a sex crime — and was under federal investigation for human trafficking — could harm the bank’s reputation. Just as troubling, anti-money-laundering specialists within the bank noticed Epstein’s pattern of withdrawing tens of thousands of dollars in cash virtually every month. These were red flags for illicit activity.
That was why Epstein was at the bank’s headquarters. JPMorgan’s top executive in charge of ensuring compliance with laws and regulations had already pushed to fire him as a client. Now Stephen Cutler, a former federal securities regulator and the bank’s general counsel, had added his voice to the chorus.
Epstein’s chief defender at the bank was Jes Staley, a top contender to one day succeed Dimon as chief executive. Staley persuaded Cutler to sit down with Epstein and “hear him out.” It was a high-stakes meeting for Epstein; his close ties to JPMorgan had been invaluable in his quest for money, influence and legitimacy. The bank lent him money. Staley dished confidential information to him. At Epstein’s behest, JPMorgan set up accounts — into which he routinely transferred huge sums — for young women who turned out to be victims of his sex-trafficking operations. It wired his funds overseas. It even paid him millions of dollars.
Epstein’s crimes have been exhaustively documented, and elements of JPMorgan’s relationship with Epstein have become public via legal proceedings in the United States and Britain. But the full story of how America’s leading lender enabled the century’s most notorious sexual predator has not been told. This account has been pieced together from thousands of pages of internal bank records, sealed deposition transcripts and other court documents and financial data, as well as interviews with people with direct knowledge of the Epstein relationship. Among the findings: Bank officials for more than a decade were anxious about Epstein’s prolific wire transfers and cash withdrawals — JPMorgan ultimately processed more than $1 billion in such transactions for him — and warned senior management about his suspicious activities. But on at least four occasions over five years, the bank’s leaders overrode those objections and continued to serve Epstein.
...
Tales of greed trumping ethics and morals are older than Wall Street itself, and the story of how and why JPMorgan spent years serving Epstein is a case study in that dynamic. But it is instructive in other ways as well. More than six years after his death in a Manhattan jail cell, where he was awaiting prosecution on federal sex-trafficking charges, mysteries continue to swirl around how Epstein amassed and deployed money and influence on a grand scale. Over time, those mysteries curdled into conspiracy theories — most of them unsubstantiated — that placed Epstein at the center of a vast global pedophilia ring or as a foreign intelligence operative compiling dirt on the rich and powerful. The Trump administration’s refusal to release files gathered by federal investigators as they built a case against Epstein — aside from unsuccessfully seeking to unseal an F.B.I. agent’s grand-jury testimony — has only added to the frenzied speculation.
In Epstein’s lengthy alliance with JPMorgan, we found a more mundane, if no less damning, explanation for Epstein’s remarkable success. He was, in the words of one friend, the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, “a collector of people.” He used those relationships to cultivate new connections and establish his legitimacy. He traded favors and gossip and advice. He created an aura of indispensability and of being so plugged-in that he bordered on omniscience — traits that made him a vital asset for a worldwide cast of government and business leaders. That, in turn, gave Epstein access to more money and connections that he could use to power his criminal activities.
But in 2011, this edifice of power and influence was at risk of crumbling. His conviction and incarceration led some of his powerful friends to back away and threatened to leave him an outcast from the financial world. His relationship with JPMorgan was therefore more important than ever. The fact that he remained a client in good standing conferred on him respectability and helped him foster new ties to corporate elites. He was determined not to blow it. Sitting in Cutler’s office that autumn afternoon, Epstein assured the general counsel that he had “turned over a new leaf.” And he rattled off names of prominent figures who, he told Cutler, could vouch for his character. “Go talk to Bill Gates about me,” Epstein said at one point.
Afterward, Cutler sat alone, trying to figure out what to do. He kept brooding for weeks. Epstein struck him as a smooth operator; it wasn’t hard to imagine him charming powerful people. Yet Cutler didn’t see how he would be able to explain to his female colleagues that JPMorgan was keeping Epstein as a client, he would later say. After a second conversation with Epstein, he informed Staley that he still thought the bank should cut ties.
But the recommendation came with crucial caveats. Cutler considered his primary job to be protecting JPMorgan from legal risks, and from his perspective, the Epstein relationship was a threat to the bank’s reputation. He did not see evidence that Epstein was using his accounts for criminal purposes. As a result, he would not insist that the bank expel him as a client. Nor would he escalate the matter to Dimon, the chief executive.
And so Epstein was allowed to stay.
Image
A man with gray hair in a blue suit in front of the U.S. Capitol.
Jamie Dimon has said he did not “recall knowing anything about Jeffrey Epstein” until 2019, even though his subordinates were fighting over whether to keep him as a client.Credit...Tom Williams/Associated Press
The story of JPMorgan’s relationship with Epstein begins in the late 1990s in the canyons of Manhattan’s financial district. Epstein was in his 40s, a college dropout who briefly worked on Wall Street after a time as a high school math teacher, and he had a gift for making it seem as if he belonged. He had gone on to advise and manage money for some big-name clients. In 1985, he opened a bank account at a company that is now part of JPMorgan, but it wasn’t until more than a decade later, as his wealth and renown grew, that he began getting noticed at the bank.
A JPMorgan client suggested to Sandy Warner, the bank’s chief executive at the time and a titan of American finance, that he meet this up-and-comer. Warner invited Epstein to a meeting in his 20th-floor office in the bank’s neoclassical headquarters at 60 Wall Street. (JPMorgan would move to Midtown a couple of years later.) The pair talked about markets and policy, Warner recalled in an interview. Epstein presented himself as a heavyweight, claiming to manage money for the Rockefellers.
That meeting was followed by a well-attended gathering at Epstein’s Manhattan home. Warner today insists that he was immediately creeped out by Epstein. Even so, he phoned one of his lieutenants to encourage him to meet Epstein, “who drops 50 names in an hourlong conversation.” That lieutenant was Jes Staley.
Staley had joined JPMorgan in 1979 after graduating from Bowdoin College in Maine with an economics degree. He worked for the bank in Brazil, where he met his future wife, and then relocated to New York. His star rose rapidly inside the storied investment bank. In 1999, Warner promoted him to run JPMorgan’s private-banking division, which catered to ultrawealthy clients. Not long after, at Warner’s urging, Staley visited Epstein at his office in an old mansion across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Midtown Manhattan. It was the beginning of a long, fateful friendship. (Staley, as well as some other current and former senior bank executives, did not respond to our questions or declined to comment for this article.)
Epstein was on his way to becoming one of JPMorgan’s most important clients. A 2003 internal report pegged his net worth at about $300 million. The report, which hasn’t previously been disclosed, noted that Epstein’s occupation was advising wealthy individuals like Leslie H. Wexner, the billionaire operator of brands like Victoria’s Secret and the Limited, though bank documents at the time did not list any other clients. That year, JPMorgan attributed more than $8 million in fees to Epstein, making him the biggest revenue generator among investor clients in the private-banking division.
But the report overlooked something that, had it been taken seriously, might have dimmed the bank’s enthusiasm. In 2003, Epstein withdrew more than $175,000 in cash from his JPMorgan accounts — a huge haul, even for someone with millions at the bank. Outside investigators later found that Epstein paid almost that exact amount to women that year. JPMorgan recognized that those withdrawals needed to be reported to federal regulators that monitor large cash transactions. But the bank failed to treat those withdrawals as an early-warning system for itself. Indeed, JPMorgan’s anti-money-laundering specialists subsequently acknowledged that such withdrawals should have alerted the bank to the possibility that Epstein was committing crimes.
Image
A number of structures on a small island.
David EnrichMatthew GoldsteinJessica Silver-Greenberg
By David EnrichMatthew Goldstein and Jessica Silver-Greenberg
The reporters, who started investigating Epstein more than six years ago, reviewed more than 13,000 of pages of legal and financial records for this article.
Sept. 8, 2025
One day in October 2011, Jeffrey Epstein walked into the cavernous lobby of 270 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. The skyscraper was home to JPMorgan Chase, arguably the world’s most prestigious bank. The sex offender — who barely a year earlier was under house arrest after serving 13 months in a Florida jail — was ushered onto an elevator and whisked to a top floor where Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive, and the rest of the senior leadership had their offices.
Listen to this article, read by Malcolm Hillgartner
Epstein had long been a treasured customer at JPMorgan. His accounts were brimming with more than $200 million. He generated millions of dollars in revenue for the bank, landing him atop an internal list of major money makers. He helped JPMorgan orchestrate an important acquisition. He introduced executives to men who would become lucrative clients, like the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and to global leaders, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. He helped executives troubleshoot crises and strategize about global opportunities.
But a growing group of employees worried that JPMorgan’s association with a man who had pleaded guilty to a sex crime — and was under federal investigation for human trafficking — could harm the bank’s reputation. Just as troubling, anti-money-laundering specialists within the bank noticed Epstein’s pattern of withdrawing tens of thousands of dollars in cash virtually every month. These were red flags for illicit activity.
That was why Epstein was at the bank’s headquarters. JPMorgan’s top executive in charge of ensuring compliance with laws and regulations had already pushed to fire him as a client. Now Stephen Cutler, a former federal securities regulator and the bank’s general counsel, had added his voice to the chorus.
Epstein’s chief defender at the bank was Jes Staley, a top contender to one day succeed Dimon as chief executive. Staley persuaded Cutler to sit down with Epstein and “hear him out.” It was a high-stakes meeting for Epstein; his close ties to JPMorgan had been invaluable in his quest for money, influence and legitimacy. The bank lent him money. Staley dished confidential information to him. At Epstein’s behest, JPMorgan set up accounts — into which he routinely transferred huge sums — for young women who turned out to be victims of his sex-trafficking operations. It wired his funds overseas. It even paid him millions of dollars.
Epstein’s crimes have been exhaustively documented, and elements of JPMorgan’s relationship with Epstein have become public via legal proceedings in the United States and Britain. But the full story of how America’s leading lender enabled the century’s most notorious sexual predator has not been told. This account has been pieced together from thousands of pages of internal bank records, sealed deposition transcripts and other court documents and financial data, as well as interviews with people with direct knowledge of the Epstein relationship. Among the findings: Bank officials for more than a decade were anxious about Epstein’s prolific wire transfers and cash withdrawals — JPMorgan ultimately processed more than $1 billion in such transactions for him — and warned senior management about his suspicious activities. But on at least four occasions over five years, the bank’s leaders overrode those objections and continued to serve Epstein.
...
Tales of greed trumping ethics and morals are older than Wall Street itself, and the story of how and why JPMorgan spent years serving Epstein is a case study in that dynamic. But it is instructive in other ways as well. More than six years after his death in a Manhattan jail cell, where he was awaiting prosecution on federal sex-trafficking charges, mysteries continue to swirl around how Epstein amassed and deployed money and influence on a grand scale. Over time, those mysteries curdled into conspiracy theories — most of them unsubstantiated — that placed Epstein at the center of a vast global pedophilia ring or as a foreign intelligence operative compiling dirt on the rich and powerful. The Trump administration’s refusal to release files gathered by federal investigators as they built a case against Epstein — aside from unsuccessfully seeking to unseal an F.B.I. agent’s grand-jury testimony — has only added to the frenzied speculation.
In Epstein’s lengthy alliance with JPMorgan, we found a more mundane, if no less damning, explanation for Epstein’s remarkable success. He was, in the words of one friend, the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, “a collector of people.” He used those relationships to cultivate new connections and establish his legitimacy. He traded favors and gossip and advice. He created an aura of indispensability and of being so plugged-in that he bordered on omniscience — traits that made him a vital asset for a worldwide cast of government and business leaders. That, in turn, gave Epstein access to more money and connections that he could use to power his criminal activities.
But in 2011, this edifice of power and influence was at risk of crumbling. His conviction and incarceration led some of his powerful friends to back away and threatened to leave him an outcast from the financial world. His relationship with JPMorgan was therefore more important than ever. The fact that he remained a client in good standing conferred on him respectability and helped him foster new ties to corporate elites. He was determined not to blow it. Sitting in Cutler’s office that autumn afternoon, Epstein assured the general counsel that he had “turned over a new leaf.” And he rattled off names of prominent figures who, he told Cutler, could vouch for his character. “Go talk to Bill Gates about me,” Epstein said at one point.
Afterward, Cutler sat alone, trying to figure out what to do. He kept brooding for weeks. Epstein struck him as a smooth operator; it wasn’t hard to imagine him charming powerful people. Yet Cutler didn’t see how he would be able to explain to his female colleagues that JPMorgan was keeping Epstein as a client, he would later say. After a second conversation with Epstein, he informed Staley that he still thought the bank should cut ties.
But the recommendation came with crucial caveats. Cutler considered his primary job to be protecting JPMorgan from legal risks, and from his perspective, the Epstein relationship was a threat to the bank’s reputation. He did not see evidence that Epstein was using his accounts for criminal purposes. As a result, he would not insist that the bank expel him as a client. Nor would he escalate the matter to Dimon, the chief executive.
And so Epstein was allowed to stay.
Image
A man with gray hair in a blue suit in front of the U.S. Capitol.
Jamie Dimon has said he did not “recall knowing anything about Jeffrey Epstein” until 2019, even though his subordinates were fighting over whether to keep him as a client.Credit...Tom Williams/Associated Press
The story of JPMorgan’s relationship with Epstein begins in the late 1990s in the canyons of Manhattan’s financial district. Epstein was in his 40s, a college dropout who briefly worked on Wall Street after a time as a high school math teacher, and he had a gift for making it seem as if he belonged. He had gone on to advise and manage money for some big-name clients. In 1985, he opened a bank account at a company that is now part of JPMorgan, but it wasn’t until more than a decade later, as his wealth and renown grew, that he began getting noticed at the bank.
A JPMorgan client suggested to Sandy Warner, the bank’s chief executive at the time and a titan of American finance, that he meet this up-and-comer. Warner invited Epstein to a meeting in his 20th-floor office in the bank’s neoclassical headquarters at 60 Wall Street. (JPMorgan would move to Midtown a couple of years later.) The pair talked about markets and policy, Warner recalled in an interview. Epstein presented himself as a heavyweight, claiming to manage money for the Rockefellers.
That meeting was followed by a well-attended gathering at Epstein’s Manhattan home. Warner today insists that he was immediately creeped out by Epstein. Even so, he phoned one of his lieutenants to encourage him to meet Epstein, “who drops 50 names in an hourlong conversation.” That lieutenant was Jes Staley.
Staley had joined JPMorgan in 1979 after graduating from Bowdoin College in Maine with an economics degree. He worked for the bank in Brazil, where he met his future wife, and then relocated to New York. His star rose rapidly inside the storied investment bank. In 1999, Warner promoted him to run JPMorgan’s private-banking division, which catered to ultrawealthy clients. Not long after, at Warner’s urging, Staley visited Epstein at his office in an old mansion across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Midtown Manhattan. It was the beginning of a long, fateful friendship. (Staley, as well as some other current and former senior bank executives, did not respond to our questions or declined to comment for this article.)
Epstein was on his way to becoming one of JPMorgan’s most important clients. A 2003 internal report pegged his net worth at about $300 million. The report, which hasn’t previously been disclosed, noted that Epstein’s occupation was advising wealthy individuals like Leslie H. Wexner, the billionaire operator of brands like Victoria’s Secret and the Limited, though bank documents at the time did not list any other clients. That year, JPMorgan attributed more than $8 million in fees to Epstein, making him the biggest revenue generator among investor clients in the private-banking division.
But the report overlooked something that, had it been taken seriously, might have dimmed the bank’s enthusiasm. In 2003, Epstein withdrew more than $175,000 in cash from his JPMorgan accounts — a huge haul, even for someone with millions at the bank. Outside investigators later found that Epstein paid almost that exact amount to women that year. JPMorgan recognized that those withdrawals needed to be reported to federal regulators that monitor large cash transactions. But the bank failed to treat those withdrawals as an early-warning system for itself. Indeed, JPMorgan’s anti-money-laundering specialists subsequently acknowledged that such withdrawals should have alerted the bank to the possibility that Epstein was committing crimes.
Image
A number of structures on a small island.
JPMorgan did financial work for Epstein’s company that handled the affairs of his private island Little Saint James in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The bank later paid settlements to victims who were sexually abused there.Credit...Emily Michot/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service, via Getty Images
JPMorgan, however, was all in. Soon it opened accounts not just for Epstein but also for his companies, including one that handled the affairs of his private island, Little Saint James, off the coast of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The bank also provided financial backing for Epstein to help Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling scout who had been the subject of media reports about drugging and raping women, start a modeling agency called MC2. JPMorgan would ultimately open at least 134 accounts for Epstein, his companies and his associates.
Wittingly or not, the bank was supporting important cogs in Epstein’s sex-trafficking machinery. On the island, Epstein would compel teenage girls and young women to give him nude massages and have sex with him. Some of Epstein’s underage victims said MC2 lured them to the United States with the prospect of paid modeling work. (In 2022, Brunel died by suicide in a French jail cell after being charged with raping teenage girls.)
The millions of dollars in fees that Epstein was paying the bank was only part of his allure. Arguably more important, he was identifying potential new clients and business opportunities. In 2003, for example, he introduced Staley to Brin, the co-founder of Google and one of the world’s richest men. Brin hired JPMorgan to help manage his immense fortune — he would eventually park more than $4 billion in assets at the bank — a decision that Staley credited to Epstein. Staley later said in a deposition that a parade of other Epstein referrals — including to Gates, Elon Musk and Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, an Emirati billionaire — followed, though not all became clients.
Just as JPMorgan landed Brin, Epstein made an even more consequential contribution to the bank’s growth. Hedge funds were all the rage among America’s rich, and Staley thought that if he could offer clients access to these investment vehicles, it would help distinguish JPMorgan from rivals. As it happened, Epstein had a useful point of contact: Glenn Dubin, who co-founded a $7 billion hedge fund called Highbridge Capital Management, and his wife, Eva Andersson-Dubin, a former Miss Sweden whom Epstein once dated. Epstein was the godfather to the Dubins’ daughter, and photographs and paintings of the girl were ubiquitous in Epstein’s colossal Upper East Side townhouse. (Epstein would later name Andersson-Dubin as a beneficiary of his estate. Her lawyer said she learned she was a beneficiary only after his death and rejected the bequest.)
In 2004, with Epstein acting as middleman, JPMorgan agreed to pay $1.3 billion for a controlling stake in Highbridge. The acquisition would turn into a landmark for the bank — and for Staley, who described it as “probably the most important transaction in my professional career.” Staley, who by then was running JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management business, was soon reporting to Dimon, the bank’s No. 2 executive and C.E.O.-in-waiting.
Epstein, for his part in arranging the Highbridge deal, pocketed a $15 million fee from the hedge fund that JPMorgan now controlled. The payout reflected a crucial reality: Epstein was the rarest of customers, one whose moneymaking potential extended far beyond his own accounts. It was imperative to keep this superclient happy.
A few months later, in early 2005, Staley emailed an underling in the private bank about bringing on another new client. Her name was Ghislaine Maxwell. She was Epstein’s ex-girlfriend and remained entwined in his life. (She would later be convicted of playing a central role in his sex-trafficking operations and is serving a 20-year sentence.) “Ghislaine is a good friend of one of our very big clients in the US,” Staley wrote. “Can we please try to help her.” Epstein later transferred millions of dollars into Maxwell’s JPMorgan account, including $7.4 million to buy a green Sikorsky helicopter to fly people to Little Saint James.
By then, Epstein’s abuse of young women and girls was attracting the notice of law enforcement. In March 2005, the parents of a 14-year-old girl filed a complaint with the police in Palm Beach, Fla., alleging that Epstein had molested her. The police opened an investigation, and soon other teenage girls shared similar stories of abuse. (Women have subsequently accused Epstein of raping them as teenagers as far back as 1985.)
Even before the investigation became public, warning lights should have been flashing inside JPMorgan. Epstein’s huge cash withdrawals continued — a total of more than $1.7 million in 2004 and 2005, according to records we reviewed — much of which was used to procure girls and young women. Some of the withdrawals took place at the bank branch in JPMorgan’s Park Avenue headquarters, where Epstein’s accountant regularly arrived to cash huge checks written from Epstein’s various accounts.
At Epstein’s request, the private bank also agreed to open accounts for two young women without actually speaking to either of them. Instead, one of Epstein’s minions provided bare-bones information, and JPMorgan couldn’t confirm one woman’s Social Security number. A banker was supposed to meet with the woman to verify her details but never did, according to a report prepared for the U.S. Virgin Islands, which later sued JPMorgan. (Evangelisti, the bank spokesman, said the accounts “were properly verified and documented.”)
Decades of scandals — in which banks facilitated drug smuggling, human trafficking, money laundering, terrorism and even genocide — gave rise to requirements that lenders vet their customers, closely monitor their activities and flag suspicious transactions to the government. Among its many lapses with Epstein, JPMorgan often failed to alert federal watchdogs to transactions that the bank later acknowledged were suspicious. And by opening accounts for young women without meeting them, the bank was missing a well-known hallmark of human traffickers: that they control victims’ interactions with the outside world.
Not until Epstein was arrested and indicted in July 2006 on charges of soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl did JPMorgan start paying more attention. In a deposition in 2023, Staley said that he phoned Dimon to tell him an important client had just been indicted and that the two executives later met in person to discuss the situation. (Dimon has denied this under oath.) “So painful to read,” Mary Erdoes, who had succeeded Staley at the helm of the private bank, emailed her boss, attaching an article about the indictment. Staley responded that he had just met with Epstein the previous night. “I’ve never seen him so shaken,” he typed on his BlackBerry, saying that Epstein “adamantly denies” being involved with girls.
Mary Erdoes, a top JPMorgan executive, signed off on a new loan to Epstein months after his indictment in Florida on a charge of soliciting prostitution from a teenage girl.Credit...Steven Ferdman/Getty Images
In private, Staley and Erdoes seemed to make light of their client’s predilections. That August, Staley attended a Hamptons fund-raiser and was struck by the crowd’s composition. “The ages between husband and wives would have fit in well with Jeffrey,” he told Erdoes in an email. She replied that Epstein’s name had come up at an event the night before. An acquaintance noted how another prominent New York businessman liked to surround himself with beautiful assistants. “Lots of comparisons to JE,” Erdoes wrote, adding that people were “laughing about Jeffrey.”
JPMorgan pulled together a team to decide what to do about their indicted but lucrative client. Around this time, the Justice Department charged another bank customer, the actor Wesley Snipes, with tax fraud. JPMorgan quickly kicked Snipes out of the bank, according to sealed court records we reviewed. (Snipes was later convicted on tax-related misdemeanors but acquitted of more serious fraud charges.)
But the Florida sex-crime charge against Epstein — even when coupled with news that the Justice Department had opened its own investigation into his activities — didn’t lead to a similar result. The team assigned to the Epstein matter noted his suspicious pattern of large cash withdrawals but, after discussing things with Staley and Erdoes, opted to keep him as a client. The one condition: JPMorgan “will not proactively solicit new investment business from him,” an internal memo said. But that did not preclude continuing to lend him money. The following year, Erdoes signed off on a new loan to Epstein. “I am relieved to hear,” a banker wrote after learning that Erdoes had approved the new credit line despite concerns raised by others within the bank.
After the panic of 1907, and at the urging of J.P. Morgan and other prominent financiers, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, establishing the Fed as America's central bank.
During World War II, the Federal Reserve aided the war effort by marketing war bonds and keeping interest rates low.
After the war, the Fed established its independence from other arms of government via the Treasury-Fed Accord.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/federal-reserve.asp
Financing of Allied bonds during World War IIn August 1914, Henry P. Davison, a Morgan partner, traveled to London and made a deal with the Bank of England to make J.P. Morgan & Co. the sole underwriter of war bonds for Great Britain and France. The Bank of England became a fiscal agent of J.P. Morgan & Co. and vice versa. Over the course of the war, J.P. Morgan loaned about $1.5 billion (approximately $47.09 billion in today's dollars) to the Allies to fight against the Germans.[8]: 63 The company also invested in the suppliers of war equipment to Britain and France, thus profiting from the financing and purchasing activities of the two European governments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.P._Morgan_%26_Co.
during World War II, J.P. Morgan & Co.
primarily financed the Allied war effort by underwriting and selling war bonds, facilitating loans for industrial production, and acting as an intermediary for crucial military supplies. J.P. Morgan Jr. even sold his yacht, the Corsair IV, to the British Admiralty for $1 to support their efforts. Conversely, the firm was also criticized for its prior involvement with financing the Axis powers; Chase Bank, a precursor to J.P. Morgan, was involved in a money exchange program that allowed Germans to convert their dollars to marks, providing funds that supported the Nazi war effort.
The "Rückwanderer" Program: Chase Bank (later merged into J.P. Morgan Chase) was involved in a money exchange program that allowed Germans in the U.S. to trade their dollars for marks. This scheme, known as the "Rückwanderer" program, allowed Nazis to provide a favorable exchange rate to these returning Germans, thereby raising funds for their own war effort.
Commissions: Chase Bank earned substantial commissions on these transactions, which contributed to the Nazi war machine's financial resources.
Client Lists: In at least one instance, Chase Bank allegedly provided its client lists to the Nazis, who then used them to recruit spies within the United States.
THE WARBURGS
2nd Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve
Paul Moritz Warburg (August 10, 1868 – January 24, 1932) was a German-born American investment banker who served as the second vice chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1916 to 1918. Prior to his term as vice chairman, Warburg served as one of the original members of the Federal Reserve Board, taking office in 1914. He was an early advocate for the establishment of the US central bank system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Warburg
Paul was a key architect of the United States' Federal Reserve System and a banker in New York, while Max led their family's bank in Hamburg, served on the board of Germany's Reichsbank, and later emigrated to the United States after the Nazi regime's rise.
He apprenticed in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, and London. From 1910 until 1938, he was director of M. M. Warburg & Co. in Hamburg, Germany. As head of that firm, he advised Kaiser Wilhelm II prior to World War I.[1]
In the 1930s, despite the rise of the Nazi Party, Warburg felt there was hope for the future in Germany and tried to wait out the Nazi crisis. From 1933, he served on the board of the German Reichsbank under governor Hjalmar Schacht. He sold the bank because the 1935 Nuremberg laws set the framework and campaign of Aryanization. He then emigrated to the United States in 1938.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Warburg
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