A major bank CEO stayed in touch with Epstein for years—and the messages weren’t “just business”
The private correspondence between a major bank chief and Jeffrey Epstein has stripped away the fiction that their relationship was a matter of routine client management. The emails, laced with coded references, intimate language, and apparent awareness of Epstein’s world, show a level of personal engagement that regulators and victims now argue helped normalize a predator inside the global financial system. As more messages surface, they are forcing a reckoning not only with one executive’s judgment, but with how elite banks chose to treat Epstein long after his crimes were known.
What emerges from these records is not a story of one rogue financier slipping through the cracks, but of powerful institutions and their leaders maintaining contact, and in some cases affection, for a man repeatedly accused of trafficking and abuse. The question hanging over the industry is no longer whether compliance systems failed, but whether personal loyalties and lucrative business blinded decision makers to the obvious.
The banker who called Epstein a “profound” friend
Jes Staley built his reputation as a consummate insider, rising through Wall Street before becoming CEO of Barclays. His career unraveled when regulators began probing whether he had misrepresented the nature of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, a financier and human trafficker whose accounts had long raised red flags. Staley ultimately resigned from Barclays amid that regulatory investigation, which focused on whether he had downplayed how close he was to Epstein and whether he had properly characterized their contact while Epstein was using bank accounts that authorities say were involved in illicit activities, according to a detailed profile of Staley.
Newly surfaced emails show that the relationship went far beyond transactional updates. In one message sent from Epstein’s New Mexico ranch, Staley wrote that he “deeply appreciate[d] our friendship” and added, “I have few so profound,” language that reads less like a banker addressing a client and more like a confidant speaking to a patron. That note, part of a broader trove of correspondence between Jes Staley and, underscores why regulators and litigants now argue that senior bankers were not merely tolerating Epstein, but embracing him socially even as his legal troubles mounted.
“Snow White,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and the coded emails
Among the most disturbing details to emerge from the correspondence is the recurring presence of fairy-tale characters as apparent code. In one exchange, Epstein asked an unidentified woman to buy a Snow White costume, a request that came weeks before Snow White appeared in a notorious email thread with the former Barclays chief. The woman reportedly replied that she did not like the idea, but Epstein persisted, a detail that has taken on new significance as investigators examine how Jeffrey Epstein used such imagery in his communications.
Later, in an email that has since become emblematic of the relationship, Staley and Epstein traded references to Snow White and other characters. When Staley responded to one message by invoking “Beauty and the Beast,” Epstein replied, “Well one side is available,” a line that now reads as a chilling joke about access to young women. The Department of Justice’s latest release of records shows how often these motifs appeared in the Epstein files, and an unredacted civil complaint describes Snow White as a recurring code in messages between Epstein and a former top J.P. Morgan executive, noting that the phrase “well one side is available” appeared in that context as well, according to the lawsuit.
From “just business” to regulatory crisis
For years, Staley publicly framed his interactions with Epstein as a professional relationship that he later came to regret. He has said he “deeply regrets” his association with Epstein, who killed himself in a federal jail in New York while awaiting a sex trafficking trial, and he initially remained in his post at Barclays as the bank’s board backed him. That stance collapsed when regulators in the United Kingdom opened a formal probe into whether he had mischaracterized the relationship, prompting his departure as Jes Staley stepped down as CEO.
The scale of their contact also undercut the idea that this was a distant or sporadic connection. Reporting on internal reviews has indicated that the Former Barclays CEO exchanged roughly 1,200 emails with Jeffrey Epstein over several years, a volume that suggests regular, ongoing communication rather than occasional check-ins. Those messages, which span periods when Jes Staley held senior roles at J.P. Morgan and later as CEO of Barclays, are now central to lawsuits and regulatory findings that argue banks ignored obvious warning signs while continuing to serve Jeffrey Epstein.
JPMorgan, lawsuits, and the “follow the money” backlash
The fallout from these revelations has not been confined to one executive or one bank. J.P. Morgan, where Staley once held a senior post, agreed to pay $290million to settle a lawsuit brought by Epstein victims who argued that the institution had ignored red flags and enabled his trafficking operation. The bank denied wrongdoing but acknowledged that it regretted its association with Epstein, and the settlement came shortly after CEO Jamie Dimon was questioned under oath about what he knew of the bank’s dealings with the financier, according to reporting on the settlement and subsequent commentary that described the “walls closing in” on Epstein’s network of clients and associates at JPMorgan.
Regulators and lawmakers have begun to map how those relationships functioned inside the banks. A Democratic Staff Memorandum Cites Need for Further Investigation into how top JPMC executives enabled Epstein’s sex trafficking operation, detailing how the bank underreported suspicious transactions and allowed Epstein to maintain signatory authority over his accounts even as internal concerns mounted. The same analysis, released as part of a broader “follow the money” effort in Washington, concluded that JPMC repeatedly failed to escalate red flags tied to Epstein, and a companion staff memorandum laid out how JPMC’s internal systems and culture allowed the financier to move money for years despite repeated alerts, according to the detailed JPMC analysis.
Litigation has also revealed the personal texture of those ties. One civil complaint alleges that Jeffrey Epstein sent a J.P. Morgan Chase executive photos of young women, part of a pattern of communications that mixed financial matters with explicit references to his sexual exploitation. The filing, which describes a “profound friendship” between Epstein and the executive, argues that such messages should have made it impossible for senior leaders to claim ignorance about the nature of his activities, according to the lawsuit. Separately, victims have accused Bank of America and BNY of facilitating Epstein’s sex trafficking venture, and a federal judge recently allowed key parts of that case to move forward, keeping pressure on additional institutions that allegedly handled money for Jeffrey Epstein.
Ariane de Rothschild and the widening circle of elite contact
The scrutiny has now spread beyond Anglo-American banks to the European private banking world. Newly released correspondence shows that Ariane de Rothschild, a prominent Swiss Bank CEO De Rothschild Kept at the center of a major Geneva-based institution, maintained years of Personal Contact With Financier Epstein. In one English language email sent on September 16, she expressed annoyance to Jeffrey Epstein about a business matter, a glimpse into a relationship that appears to have blended personal familiarity with financial dealings, according to documents detailing Ariane de Rothschild and her bank’s ties to Epstein.
Those revelations echo the pattern seen in Staley’s emails, where the tone often veered into the personal even as the subject matter touched on investments and accounts. A separate political report described how the Swiss Bank CEO De Rothschild Kept up Years long Personal Contact With Financier Epstein, underscoring that this was not a fleeting acquaintance but a sustained connection that survived his first criminal case and public disgrace. The fact that such a figure in European finance remained in touch with Epstein for years reinforces the sense that his social capital inside elite banking circles persisted long after his reputation should have made him untouchable.
