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Senate Democrats are preparing to investigate JPMorgan Chase’s banking relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after they take control of Congress early next year. The planned inquiry would place the nation’s biggest bank and its senior leadership under renewed scrutiny.

Democratic staffers on the Senate Finance Committee intend to examine how senior JPMorgan executives handled Epstein, according to a source familiar with the panel’s thinking. The source spoke anonymously because the investigation has not been announced.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and the committee’s current ranking member, is likely to become chairman in January. Wyden has signaled that he intends to use the subpoena powers available to committee majorities.

Staffers plan to focus particularly on decisions made by Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO of JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management division, the source said. Those decisions included whether Epstein should have remained a bank client.

JPMorgan declined to comment on the planned investigation. The bank has previously said it regrets any association with Epstein while maintaining that it did not assist him in committing crimes.

During a 2023 deposition, Erdoes said she knew as early as 2006 that Epstein had been accused of paying cash to have underage girls brought to his home. Epstein had been a JPMorgan client since 1998.

Epstein became a registered sex offender after pleading guilty in Florida in 2008 to a state criminal charge of procuring an underage girl for prostitution. JPMorgan did not end its client relationship with him until 2013.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in his own 2023 deposition that Erdoes had authority to cut Epstein off as a client. She did not exercise that authority until five years after his Florida guilty plea.

Epstein died in a jailhouse suicide in August 2019, weeks after his arrest on federal child sex trafficking charges. He had been associated with President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton and many other prominent people.

A lawyer for the U.S. Virgin Islands told a federal judge in New York in 2023 that JPMorgan “was a full-service bank for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking,” and waited until his death to notify the Treasury Department about $1 billion in suspicious transactions related to trafficking.

“This was a CYA [cover your a--] reporting after 16 years of all of the monies flowing in his JPMorgan accounts after he was dead,” lawyer Mimi Liu said.

JPMorgan has blamed former investment banking chief Jes Staley for concealing or failing to report criminal activity connected to Epstein. Staley, who had a close relationship with Epstein, left JPMorgan in 2013 and later became CEO of Barclays before stepping down in 2021.

Staley has denied knowing about Epstein’s crimes. House Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said after a private interview with Staley in July that the former executive had encouraged JPMorgan to retain Epstein as a client.

JPMorgan agreed in mid 2023 to a $290 million settlement with Epstein’s victims without admitting wrongdoing. That year, it also agreed to pay $75 million to settle a separate U.S. Virgin Islands lawsuit alleging the bank facilitated and benefited from Epstein’s trafficking of young women.

Wyden released a report in August accusing senior officials at multiple banks of “looking the other way” while Epstein moved hundreds of millions of dollars to finance a trafficking operation that lasted for years.

“The report exposes how top bankers shielded Epstein from federal scrutiny by delaying the reporting of Epstein’s suspicious financial activity to the U.S. government, likely in violation of federal anti-money-laundering laws,” Wyden’s office said.

The report also identified officials at JPMorgan and other banks who were responsible for reporting Epstein’s activities. Wyden’s office alleged they protected Epstein to gain access to Leon Black and other billionaires.

Black, the former CEO of Apollo Global Management, paid Epstein $158 million for financial advice after Epstein’s 2008 conviction. In September, Black sued the House oversight panel to block subpoenas seeking his testimony and documents connected to its Epstein investigation.

Black also sued Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., on Wednesday, alleging that Garcia defamed him through statements about Epstein. Garcia is positioned to become chairman of the Oversight Committee in the next Congress.

Congress previously passed a bill ordering the Department of Justice to release its files related to Epstein. Trump’s name appears thousands of times in released files, but the president has not been charged with wrongdoing connected to Epstein and fell out with him in the early 2000s.

DISCLAIMER: GoldInvestors.news is not a registered investment, legal or tax advisor or broker/dealer. All investment/financial opinions expressed by GoldInvestors.news are from the personal research and experience of the owner of the site and are intended as educational material. Although best efforts are made to ensure that all information is accurate and up to date, occasionally unintended errors and misprints may occur.