Former Barclays Chief Executive Jes Staley is slated to testify on Thursday in a private session of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform as part of the panel's probe into Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Staley ran Barclays beginning in 2015 and stepped down in 2021 following a dispute with the British financial regulator over how he characterized his interactions with Epstein. The Financial Conduct Authority later issued a ban from the industry, citing more than 1,000 emails that included language in which Staley reportedly described his relationship with Epstein as "profound" and referred to him as "family." Staley has said he does not recall those emails and has maintained that his relationship with Epstein was professional and that he did not know about Epstein's crimes.
In June 2025, Staley lost an appeal challenging the FCA's ban, which asserted that Staley had misled the regulator about the nature of his ties to Epstein. Separately, Staley is a defendant in a civil lawsuit filed in Los Angeles that accuses him and Barclays of misleading shareholders about his connections to Epstein; the defendants have sought dismissal of those claims.
Staley's legal counsel did not immediately provide comment on Wednesday in response to requests from reporters.
Before his tenure at Barclays, Staley headed the private bank at JPMorgan Chase, where Epstein was a client. The U.S. Virgin Islands sued JPMorgan, alleging the bank ignored signs of Epstein's sex trafficking. JPMorgan denied liability and later reached a settlement in that litigation without admitting wrongdoing. The bank in turn brought a suit against Staley, which the parties ultimately resolved through a confidential settlement.
Epstein died in a New York City jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges; his death was ruled a suicide. The congressional oversight investigation has interviewed multiple high-profile individuals, with the committee speaking to former President Bill Clinton, Commerce Secretary and former Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Goldman Sachs senior counsel Kathy Ruemmler among others.
The closed-door nature of Staley's scheduled testimony follows a pattern in which the committee has pursued private interviews as it gathers information about Epstein's network of contacts across politics, finance, academia and business. The appearance is one element of an ongoing oversight effort that spans regulatory actions in the United Kingdom, civil litigation in U.S. courts and congressional fact-gathering.
Context and implications
The upcoming session will provide lawmakers with another opportunity to question a senior figure in global banking about past professional and personal contacts with Epstein. The outcome of the committee's inquiry and related litigation and regulatory processes, as described by authorities and plaintiffs, remains unresolved.