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Donald Trump is not the only prominent figure who may be regretting his dealings with the disgraced financier and child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In October 2019, Barclays Bank sent a letter to the Financial Conduct Authority assuring the FCA that the bank’s chief executive, James Edward “Jes” Staley, “did not have a close relationship with Mr Epstein”, who had died in prison two months earlier. Staley’s “last contact with Mr Epstein was well before he joined Barclays in 2015”, the letter asserted.

A month ago, the Upper Tribunal tax and chancery chamber “found that Mr Staley knew, when he approved the letter, that its contents were factually inaccurate”. For that reason, it declined to interfere with the FCA’s decision in May 2023 banning Staley from performing any senior management role in regulated financial services. He had resigned from Barclays in October 2021 after being told of the FCA’s preliminary conclusions.

The FCA confirmed its decision last week after Staley had run out of time to appeal. He must pay a penalty of £1.1m by next week.

Should the Financial Conduct Authority punish financiers for non-financial misconduct? And what implications does this case have for other professionals — lawyers, for example, whose regulators may seek to regulate what used to be regarded as their private lives?

Those are among the questions I raised in the latest episode of A Lawyer Talks with David Hamilton, a partner at Howard Kennedy who specialises in financial services enforcement and compliance (pictured). We discussed whether the FCA had struck the right balance between protecting consumers and encouraging investment.

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