US regulators urged to investigate former Barclays chief's ties to Epstein

The Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren is calling for an investigation into bankers including Jes Staley over their alleged support for the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in a move that could leave the former Barclays boss banned from working in the US financial sector.

- Kalyeena Makortoff

In a letter privately filed with regulators, and seen by the Guardian, Warren called for investigations into “all current and former US banking executives who may have facilitated Jeffrey Epstein’s illicit conduct”.

That includes Staley, who Warren said is alleged to have helped protect the late financier’s access to the banking system during his stint working at JP Morgan in the early 2000s. Warren noted that Staley - who is already banned from the UK banking sector - had been described in media reports as Epstein’s “chief defender”.

Warren, the lead Democrat on the US Senate committee on banking, housing and urban affairs, said she was concerned to hear Staley pushed back when colleagues flagged Epstein’s suspicious transactions, referring to a matter that was put to him in court proceedings earlier this year.

Staley denied the allegations at the time, saying “I don’t think that’s fair”, and that the decision to cancel the accounts of a client such as Epstein was not his to make.