Revealed: Top Wall Street banker was Jeffrey Epstein pal at the heart of the scandal

Financial services giant JPMorgan Chase is suing former executive Jes Staley, an associate of infamous former wealth manager and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein — and revealing in the suit that he is the man accused in a separate suit of a sexual assault against a woman victimized in Epstein's ring.

"The bank is facing lawsuits from the U.S. Virgin Islands and from an unnamed woman alleging it aided Epstein’s yearslong sex trafficking by allowing him to remain a client and helping him send money to victims," reported David Benoit and Khadeeja Safdar. "In her lawsuit, the woman had accused one of Epstein’s friends, 'a powerful financial executive,' of sexual assault using aggressive force but said she was afraid to identify him publicly. JPMorgan, in its lawsuit Wednesday, said that friend was Mr. Staley."

"Mr. Staley has maintained he was friendly with Epstein but never knew about his alleged crimes," noted the report. "'I thought I knew him well and I didn’t,' Mr. Staley said in early 2020, before he stepped down as chief executive of Barclays PLC. 'For sure, with hindsight, with what we all know now, I deeply regret having had any relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.'"

Epstein, who escaped proper scrutiny for years thanks to a controversial plea bargain cut in the late 2000s, is now known to have hosted "parties" at properties all around the world in which he violently raped girls and young women — and passed them around to associates.

The full extent of this is still unknown, although powerful people, including Prince Andrew, have been accused of assault in connection with Epstein's operation.

Epstein himself was found dead of suicide in a Manhattan jail cell shortly after being arrested in 2019. His longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite who helped procure girls for him, was sentenced to 20 years in prison.