(Bloomberg) -- Jeffrey Epstein used Jes Staley’s adult daughter to stay in touch with the former Barclays Plc chief for years after he took over running of the British bank, according to court documents.
While Staley long maintained that he cut off his friendship with the late pedophile financier once he became boss of the UK bank, the former chief executive officer communicated with Epstein via his eldest daughter, Alexa Staley, between 2016 and 2017, the London court filing shows.
Bloomberg first reported in February that Staley and Epstein had remained in contact through an intermediary after he became CEO of Barclays. The emails revealed in the court filing on Monday identified Alexa Staley as that go-between for the first time.
Representatives for Alexa and Jes Staley declined to comment after a hearing on Monday regarding the former CEO’s appeal of a UK regulator’s decision to ban him from the country’s finance industry for having “recklessly misled” the watchdog.
Staley maintains that he had no direct contact with Epstein after he took the reins at Barclays and he’s previously said that all five emails with his daughter that were referenced in Monday’s filing were initiated by the late financier.
In one instance, Epstein emailed Alexa Staley in November 2016 to gauge his interest in becoming Treasury Secretary in the first administration of US President-elect Donald Trump. Epstein, who died by suicide a month after his arrest on sex trafficking charges in 2019, didn’t have a role with Trump’s transition team.
“Could you ask your dad if he would like to be considered for Treasury,” Epstein wrote in an unredacted email shown to the court in London. Alexa Staley relayed the message to her father and later replied that she had spoken with him but that he had said “not yet, but thanks.”
In another exchange in September 2016, Epstein wrote to Alexa Staley telling her to remind her father that it would soon be the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Alexa replied that “after a year with B he wants to visit, do you ever come to SF?”
Jes Staley became CEO of Barclays in December 2015 after spending more than three decades at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Alexa Staley, who is now 35, previously worked in San Francisco for a drone operator company.
The documents also show that Alexa Staley fielded a request from Epstein to get her father’s views on Veronique Weill, a former colleague at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Jes Staley and Epstein formed a mutually beneficial bond over the course of many years and the former bank boss had previously communicated directly with Epstein about his daughter’s future.
In November 2010, he had fretted in an email to the late financier about her chances of gaining admission into New York’s Columbia University. Epstein ultimately helped ease the path of his eldest daughter to get into the elite US university, Bloomberg previously reported.
In addition to her doctorate in physics from Columbia, Alexa Staley has an undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College, her father’s alma mater.
The documents were released as part of a legal challenge brought by Jes Staley over his ties to Epstein. He is disputing a decision last year to ban him from the UK finance industry for having misled the Financial Conduct Authority by allowing the bank’s board to downplay his interactions with Epstein.
A trial is due to take place in London in March, court documents show. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and Barclays Chairman Nigel Higgins are set to give evidence as part of the case.
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