US senator presses Dimon on Epstein link to UK bonus tax fight
US Senator Elizabeth Warren has demanded Jamie Dimon explain whether JP Morgan used advice from Jeffrey Epstein to threaten the UK government over a banker bonus tax, raising fresh reputational risks for the Wall Street giant in Europe.
Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the US senate banking committee, has written to Jamie Dimon requesting clarification on JP Morgan’s contact with Jeffrey Epstein. The letter focuses on whether the disgraced financier advised the bank's chief executive during a 2009 lobbying effort against a proposed UK tax on banker bonuses.
The inquiry centres on a 2009 email disclosed this year by the US Department of Justice. In the message, Epstein asked former Labour minister Peter Mandelson if Dimon should lobby the then chancellor, Alistair Darling. Mandelson replied that Dimon should “mildly threaten” the chancellor.
Dimon subsequently spoke to Darling to argue against the tax. During that conversation, the JP Morgan boss pointed out that the bank was a major UK employer and a significant purchaser of government bonds. He also threatened to cancel planned investment in a new London headquarters if the tax went ahead.
For European policymakers, the resurfaced episode underscores how heavily the continent relies on massive US financial institutions. It also demonstrates how Wall Street banks can leverage their physical presence and sovereign debt purchases to directly pressure European governments on domestic tax policy.
Dimon told a court in 2023 that he never met Epstein and did not know his name until his 2019 arrest. However, Jes Staley, a former JP Morgan executive and ex-Barclays chief executive, has alleged he communicated with Dimon about the bank’s relationship with Epstein.
JP Morgan firmly denied any such conversation took place. A bank spokesperson noted that a UK tribunal has already called Staley’s testimony “evasive and unreliable”, adding that any suggestion Dimon spoke with Epstein or took his counsel was false.
Warren argued the emails raise serious questions about Dimon’s knowledge of the bank’s ties to Epstein. “It is critical that Congress and the American public fully understand the extent of any interactions the bank and you had with Epstein,” she wrote.
JP Morgan exited Epstein as a client in 2013 and has sued Staley for allegedly hiding the financier’s crimes from colleagues. “Any association with the man was a mistake and we regret it, but we would not have continued doing business with him had we believed he was engaged in ongoing crimes,” a spokesperson said. The bank claimed it ended the relationship years before Epstein’s federal sex trafficking arrest and after the US government withheld damning information.
