Former Barclays boss Jes Staley has denied having sex with a woman dressed as Snow White. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.

Staley gave testimony last month in a closed-door interview with US lawmakers investigating his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The transcript of that interview has now been released.

Epstein died in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges.

Email exchange with Epstein

In emails from 9 and 10 July 2010, Staley and Epstein referred to Disney princesses. In those messages, Staley told Epstein: "That was fun. Say hi to Snow White."

Epstein then asked: "What character would you like next?" to which Staley replied: "Beauty and the Beast." Epstein responded: "Well one side is availble [sic]."

Congressional questions

Lawmakers asked Staley: "Did you ever have sex with a young woman in a Snow White costume?"

They also discussed another email sent to Epstein by an unnamed individual on 10 July 2010, 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?"

Staley was also asked whether he and Epstein used "Disney princesses as code names for selecting women for sexual encounters", to which Staley replied, "No."

Career and consequences

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.

He 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.