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Jes Staley made the comments to US lawmakers investigating his links to Jeffrey Epstein
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Business — Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent
The former Barclays boss Jes Staley has denied having sex with a woman dressed as Snow White, after being questioned about an infamous email exchange about Disney princesses with Jeffrey Epstein.
The comments were detailed in newly released transcripts from a closed-door interview last month with US lawmakers as part of their investigation into Epstein, who died in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges.
In the email exchange on 9 and 10 July 2010 Staley and Epstein referred to Disney princesses. In those messages, the details of which have been circulating in the media since 2021, Staley tells Epstein: “That was fun. Say hi to Snow White.”
Epstein then asks: “What character would you like next?” to which Staley replied: “Beauty and the Beast.” Epstein responded: “Well one side is availble [sic].”
During his congressional testimony, Staley, who spent more than three decades at JPMorgan Chase before joining Barclays in 2015, was asked: “Did you ever have sex with a young woman in a Snow White costume?
Lawmakers then questioned Staley about another email, sent to Epstein by an unnamed individual on 10 July 2010 and which said: “the snow white was f..ed twice as soon as she put her costume))”. Epstein appears to have asked an unnamed individual to buy a Snow White costume weeks before those exchanges, on 20 June 2010.
“Why would this young woman have sent this email to Mr. Epstein if the two of you had not had sex while she was wearing a Snow White costume and if Mr. Epstein had not instructed her to do so?” a congressional representative, whose name has been redacted from the transcript, asked.
“I have no idea who else she was with. I – it has nothing to do with me, though,” Staley said. When pressed further, he said: “I may have seen her in apartment [sic] and prompted that email. But I was not with a person dressed as Snow White outside of potentially crossing at his apartment.”
The representative asked: “So you may have seen her in his apartment, later emailed Mr. Epstein and said, ‘That was fun,’ but it was not because you had sex with her?”
In the transcript, Staley is then asked: “Would you agree that’s a pretty incredible coincidence, that you email him on July 9th, saying, ‘That was fun, say hi to Snow White,’ and then [the unnamed individual] emails him the next day, reporting back on something that just didn’t have anything to do with you?”
“That’s pretty hard to believe,” the representative said.
The former banker was also asked whether he and Epstein used “Disney princesses as code names for selecting women for sexual encounters”, to which Staley replied, “No.”
Staley’s reputation has been tarnished as a result of his well-documented friendship with the child sex offender.
Staley originally met Epstein in 2000 after he became head of JP Morgan’s private bank, where Epstein was a client. Staley later took over as chief executive of Barclays, one of the UK’s largest banks, in 2015 but was forced to step down in 2021 after City regulators opened an investigation into his relationship with Epstein.
Staley was eventually banned from taking any job in the UK’s financial sector for playing down those ties. He tried and failed to overturn that banking ban last year in a court battle that revealed intimate details of the pair’s friendship.
The comments were detailed in newly released transcripts from a closed-door interview last month with US lawmakers as part of their investigation into Epstein, who died in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges.
This report is published with credit to The Guardian. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on The Guardian →
Source: The Guardian · Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent. Published 27 Aug 2026, 05:21 pm.
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