By Tatiana Bautzer and Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Lawyers for Jeffrey Epstein victims who are suing JPMorgan Chase over its ties to the disgraced financier on Friday asked a judge to require Chief Executive Jamie Dimon and two other bank officials to sit for new depositions.
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan, the lawyers said recalling the executives was necessary because JPMorgan has been slow to produce relevant documents, including more than 1,500 produced after Dimon’s May 26 deposition.
The lawyers said these documents included discussion of an internal review conducted after Epstein’s August 2019 death, and a 22-page timeline of emails including messages between Epstein and Jes Staley, who once oversaw asset management at JPMorgan.
Epstein was a JPMorgan client from 1998 to 2013. He died of an apparent suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Other executives the lawyers want to recall are Mary Erdoes, who runs JPMorgan’s wealth and asset management business, and Mary Casey, a former private banker for Epstein.
JPMorgan spokesman Darin Oduyoye said there was no basis for new depositions.
“Plaintiffs like the headlines, but no amount of time on the record will change the fact that Jamie Dimon never met the man, never worked with the man, and wishes in hindsight the man had never been a client,” Oduyoye said.
In his deposition, Dimon said he had barely heard of Epstein before the financier’s arrest.
JPMorgan is also being sued over Epstein by the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the financier allegedly also abused victims on a private island he owned.
The bank is suing Staley to cover losses it may face in both lawsuits.
Staley, who was Barclays’ CEO from 2015 to 2021, is expected to sit for a deposition on Saturday.
The case is Jane Doe 1 v JPMorgan Chase & Co, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-10019.
(Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Richard Chang)
