By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon may have ordered a 2019 review of the bank's relationship with the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the U.S. Virgin Islands said.
The U.S. territory, where Epstein owned two neighboring islands, made the claim in a letter made public on Tuesday, in its lawsuit accusing the largest U.S. bank of ignoring Epstein's sexual abuses and letting him run a sex trafficking operation.
JPMorgan last week agreed to settle a similar lawsuit brought by Epstein victims for $290 million. The U.S. Virgin Islands lawsuit is scheduled for an Oct. 23 trial in Manhattan federal court.
Internal emails show that following Epstein's July 2019 arrest on sex trafficking charges, JPMorgan conducted a review known as "Project Jeep" that included emails between Epstein and Jes Staley, a former friend and JPMorgan private banking chief.
Epstein had been a JPMorgan client from 1998 until the bank terminated him in 2013. He died of an apparent suicide in August 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial.
In a May 26 deposition, Dimon said he never met Epstein, did not recall discussing his accounts internally, and barely knew who Epstein was prior to the July 2019 arrest.
The territory wanted him to sit for a second deposition after new documents about Epstein and Staley surfaced.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who oversees the lawsuit, denied that request on Friday.
JPMorgan declined to comment on Tuesday.
In the June 7 letter, the U.S. Virgin Islands said an email from a compliance executive to two others referred to a "project" ordered by "top of house" that turned into Project Jeep - drawn from Epstein's first and last names.
It referred to a 22-page summary of emails primarily between and among Epstein, Staley and others.
That summary "was prepared as part of Project Jeep, which the documents suggest may have been ordered by Dimon himself, not by the legal department and not in relation to any pending or anticipated litigation," the U.S. Virgin Islands said.
The review showed Staley seeking Epstein's advice on issues such as his own compensation and the 2008 financial crisis, including some messages after Epstein pleaded guilty to a Florida state prostitution charge.
"I hope you keep the island," Staley wrote Epstein on Sept. 29, 2008, two weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed. "We may all need to live there."
Staley has acknowledged being friendly with Epstein, but denied knowing about his sex trafficking. His lawyers did not immediately respond to requests on Tuesday for comment.
A spokesperson for the Virgin Islands said the bank's senior executives "ignored the evidence of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes."
JPMorgan is suing Staley to cover its losses in the U.S. Virgin Islands' and Epstein victims' lawsuits.
Staley left the bank a few months after Epstein, and later spent six years as Barclays (LON:BARC)' chief executive.