US senator wants urgent answers from Barclays over Jes Staley’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein

Jes Staley was forced to step down as CEO of Barclays over his links with Jeffrey Epstein. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty View image in fullscreen Jes Staley was forced to step down as CEO of Barclays over his links with Jeffrey Epstein. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty US senator wants urgent answers from Barclays over Jes Staley’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein Exclusive: Elizabeth Warren says it is unclear how bank failed to uncover former CEO’s links with sex offender The leading US senator Elizabeth Warren has called for urgent answers from Barclays over what she claimed was its “apparent failure to meaningfully investigate” ties between the bank’s former boss, Jes Staley, and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In a letter sent privately to Barclays’s chair, Nigel Higgins, and seen by the Guardian, Warren – the most senior Democrat on the US senate banking committee – said it was “deeply unclear how Barclays , supposedly investigating Staley’s connection to Epstein, failed to uncover this decades-long relationship”. The letter, sent also on behalf of the Congress members Ro Khanna and Raja Krishnamoorthi, gave Barclays two weeks to answer a series of questions about how they handled information on the links between its former chief executive and Epstein, who died while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges in 2019. The questions included whether the bank conducted any reviews into “deficiencies” in its executive hiring process, which had “allowed the board to hire a CEO who held extensive professional and personal ties to a convicted sex offender”. The US lawmakers raised a string of concerns about information arising from a UK court hearing last year , in which Staley unsuccessfully tried to overturn the regulator’s decision to ban him from the British banking industry, four years after he was forced to step down as boss of Barclays. View image in fullscreen Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, tells Barclays it ‘simply took him [Jes Staley] at his word’. Photograph: Allison Robbert/AP Those concerns included Higgins’s admission that he had not asked Staley about his last contact with Epstein before Higgins’s declaration to the Financial Conduct Authority that the last contact had been “well before” the CEO joined Barclays. “It appears that neither you nor any other member of the board conducted any deeper due diligence to verify Staley’s claims and simply took him at his word,” the letter said, referring to exchanges between the executive and board members during Staley’s tenure. “It is unclear what specific actions, if any, Barclays took to investigate Staley and Epstein’s personal ties.” The US lawmakers said the episode sparked questions about how the bank was managed. “Barclays’s apparent failure to meaningfully investigate or address Staley’s relationship with Epstein raises significant governance questions regarding the bank’s ability to hold senior executives accountable for wrongdoing,” the letter said. The signatories also warned that it