Bowdoin College President Clayton Rose told students, faculty and staff that he was “clearly wrong” to call Jes Staley someone who “represents all that is great about Bowdoin and the culture and values here” during an interview in 2019.
(Bloomberg) — Bowdoin College President Clayton Rose told students, faculty and staff that he was “clearly wrong” to call Jes Staley someone who “represents all that is great about Bowdoin and the culture and values here” during an interview in 2019.
Staley, JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s former private wealth chief and a member of Bowdoin’s class of 1979, was recently accused in a lawsuit against the bank of having “personally observed” sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein, with whom he allegedly had a “profound” friendship. Epstein, a financier who was convicted in 2008 of soliciting a minor for prostitution, was charged with sex trafficking in 2019 and died in jail of an apparent suicide.
“Epstein’s conduct was monstrous, and the revelation about the extent of Jes’s relationship with him is deeply disturbing,” Rose wrote in a letter released Wednesday.
JPMorgan said in a court filing Wednesday that emails between Staley and Epstein “provide no basis to infer that Staley detected Epstein’s sex-trafficking.” Staley, who is not named as a defendant in the litigation against JPMorgan, has consistently denied knowledge of Epstein’s actions. His lawyer didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Staley left JPMorgan in 2013 and became chief executive officer of Barclays Plc two years later. He was named to the Bowdoin board in 2007, and resigned on Nov. 1, 2021, the same day he stepped down from Barclays after a regulatory investigation was opened into his relationship with Epstein. Barclays declined to comment.
“Whatever we learn about the truth of the specific and deeply troubling allegations made in the court filing, from what we now understand about the depth of his relationship with Epstein, I was clearly wrong,” he said about his comment in 2019.
A call and email to Rose’s office and a Bowdoin spokesperson weren’t immediately returned.
–With assistance from Brian Chappatta and David Scheer.
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