LONDON — The former chief executive of Barclays Bank, Jes Staley, lost a legal challenge Thursday against a 2023 decision by Britain's financial regulator to ban him from holding senior financial roles in the United Kingdom for misleading it over the nature of his relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The case centered on a letter sent from Barclays to the Financial Conduct Authority in 2019, which claimed that Staley did not have a ''close relationship'' with Epstein and that their last contact was ''well before'' he joined the bank in December 2015.
He left the bank in 2021 following criticism of his ties to Epstein, who killed himself in a federal jail in August 2019, a month after his arrest on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.
The regulator had found that the letter was misleading and that Staley acted ''recklessly and without integrity'' by allowing it to be sent. Lawyers for the regulator told the tribunal in March that Staley and Epstein had a ''friendship'' and maintained contact through Staley's daughter up to at least February 2017.
In its ruling, the tribunal said it would have expected Staley, 68, to have been ''particularly careful'' in ensuring the letter was accurate, and that his breaches of FCA rules represented ''a serious failure of judgment.''
It added that they saw ''no basis'' on which it should interfere with the decision to ban Staley, which was ''a course of action reasonably open'' to the FCA.
The judgment also said that Staley had shown ''no remorse for his conduct.''
In addition to the ban, Staley, a U.S. citizen, had been fined 1.8 million pounds ($2.5 million) by the regulator. The tribunal did reduce that to around 1.1 million pounds.
