Barclays and Jes Staley face fresh lawsuit in US over Epstein link
Barclays and its former chief executive Jes Staley are facing a class action lawsuit in the US over claims they defrauded and misled investors over Staley’s relationship with the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.A judge in a Los Angeles court denied Staley’s request to dismiss the case this week, paving the way for a fresh hearing that continues a long-running legal saga emanating from Staley’s statements to regulators and investors over the nature of his ties to the disgraced financier.It is a bruising outcome for the American banker, who lost a legal challenge in the UK on Thursday against the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which in 2023 had banned him for life from holding senior management roles in the City for misleading the watchdog over his history with Epstein.The US class action suit, led by pension funds in New York and Missouri, alleges that Barclays, its chair, Nigel Higgins, and Staley repeatedly misrepresented Staley’s history with Epstein to media and investors, starting in July 2019, weeks after Epstein was arrested on charges of trafficking underage girls for sex.Court documents allege that this was done in an attempt to protect Barclays’ reputation and share price.
The plaintiffs claim Barclays downplayed the relationship even after the FCA launched its investigation, which centred on claims made in a letter it received from Barclays in October 2019,That letter claimed that Staley “did not have a close relationship” with Epstein and that his last contact with the financier had been “well before” he joined Barclays four years earlier in 2015,The FCA investigation, triggered by a cache of 1,200 emails from Staley’s former employer JP Morgan, concluded that the pair were “indeed close” and had a relationship that “went beyond one that was professional in nature”,The US lawsuit claims Barclays, Staley and Higgins misled them even after learning about the FCA investigation,They claim that this continued even after Barclays reviewed the JP Morgan email cache, which “demonstrated that the two men shared a much closer, personal relationship than defendants acknowledged to the FCA and the public”.
The case has been brought by US shareholders and owners of American depository receipts (ADRs), which give investors the chance to own and trade shares in foreign companies on US stock exchanges.They claim they were ultimately defrauded, having learned about the true nature of Staley and Epstein’s relationship only after the FCA publicly released findings of its investigation and banned Staley from the City in October 2023.The news caused the value of their shares and ADRs to drop, resulting in “significant economic losses”.Staley had resigned from Barclays two years earlier, in 2021, over preliminary findings from the FCA’s investigation.“When the FCA privately informed defendants of the outcome of its preliminary investigation, Staley left Barclays.
Nevertheless, Barclays publicly continued to minimise the scope of the FCA’s investigation into Staley’s relationship with Epstein and voiced its support for its former CEO,” court filings by the plaintiffs state.That continued, they allege, after damaging details were revealed in a civil suit against JP Morgan, which was accused of banking Epstein while he was sex trafficking women and girls.While the cases were eventually settled, the class action says the evidence presented “further exposed correspondence between Staley and Epstein that publicly revealed their relationship was more than merely professional – contrary to the assurances defendants made to investors in Barclays securities”.Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotionThe filings cite an infamous exchange in which the pair refer to Disney princesses in July 2010.“That was fun.
Say hi to Snow White,” Staley wrote.“What character would you like next?” Epstein asked, to which Staley replied: “Beauty and the Beast.”The filing states: “When defendants’ deception of the FCA and investors was revealed, the price of Barclays securities again fell, and investors were further economically damaged.”The plaintiffs are suing Barclays, Higgins and Staley for an unspecified amount, saying they want compensation for “all damages sustained as a result of defendants’ wrongdoing, in an amount to be proven at trial, including interest”.They are also requesting that costs and expenses linked to the trial be covered, on top of “such other relief as the court may deem just and proper”.
The first scheduling hearing in this US class action case, which will start setting out a timetable and deadlines for the legal process, is due to take place on 14 August.A legal representative for Staley declined to comment.Barclays and Higgins declined to comment.
Inside a plan to use AI to amplify doubts about the dangers of pollutants
An industry-backed researcher who has forged a career sowing doubt about the dangers of pollutants is attempting to use artificial intelligence (AI) to amplify his perspective.Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr, a Denver-based risk analyst and former Trump adviser who once reportedly claimed there is no proof that cleaning air saves lives, is developing an AI application to scan academic research for what he sees as the false conflation of correlation with causation.Cox has described the project as an attempt to weed “propaganda” out of epidemiological research and perform “critical thinking at scale” in emails to industry researchers, which were obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests by the Energy and Policy Institute, a non-profit advocacy group, and exclusively reviewed by the Guardian.He has long leveled accusations of flimsiness at research linking exposure to chemical compounds with health dangers, including on behalf of polluting interests such as cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris USA and the American Petroleum Institute – a fossil fuel lobbying group he has even allowed to “copy edit” his findings. (Cox says the edit “amounted to suggesting a small change” and noted that he has also obtained public research funding
Trump’s tax bill seeks to prevent AI regulations. Experts fear a heavy toll on the planet
US Republicans are pushing to pass a major spending bill that includes provisions to prevent states from enacting regulations on artificial intelligence. Such untamed growth in AI will take a heavy toll upon the world’s dangerously overheating climate, experts have warned.About 1bn tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide are set to be emitted in the US just from AI over the next decade if no restraints are placed on the industry’s enormous electricity consumption, according to estimates by researchers at Harvard University and provided to the Guardian.This 10-year timeframe, a period of time in which Republicans want a “pause” of state-level regulations upon AI, will see so much electricity use in data centers for AI purposes that the US will add more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than Japan does annually, or three times the yearly total from the UK.The exact amount of emissions will depend on power plant efficiency and how much clean energy will be used in the coming years, but the blocking of regulations will also be a factor, said Gianluca Guidi, visiting scholar at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features
The Danish government is to clamp down on the creation and dissemination of AI-generated deepfakes by changing copyright law to ensure that everybody has the right to their own body, facial features and voice.The Danish government said on Thursday it would strengthen protection against digital imitations of people’s identities with what it believes to be the first law of its kind in Europe.Having secured broad cross-party agreement, the department of culture plans to submit a proposal to amend the current law for consultation before the summer recess and then submit the amendment in the autumn.It defines a deepfake as a very realistic digital representation of a person, including their appearance and voice.The Danish culture minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, said he hoped the bill before parliament would send an “unequivocal message” that everybody had the right to the way they looked and sounded
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez arrive in Venice for divisive wedding
The billionaire Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and the former TV journalist Lauren Sánchez have arrived in Venice as they prepare to tie the knot in a lavish three-day celebration that has divided the lagoon city.Scores of celebrities and other members of the world’s super-rich will also join the pair in Italy, arriving on superyachts and private jets.Bezos, the world’s fourth-richest person, and Sánchez were seen stepping off a water taxi on Wednesday as they entered the exclusive Aman Venice hotel on the Grand Canal, where many of the celebrities will stay.More than 90 private jets are expected to land in Venice before the celebrations officially begin on Thursday, bringing in guests for an event that some have called the “wedding of the century” and is rumoured to involve everything from pyjama parties to elegant dinners.Among the first guests to arrive were Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, her husband, Jared Kushner, and their children
Group of high-profile authors sue Microsoft over use of their books in AI training
A group of authors has accused Microsoft of using nearly 200,000 pirated books to create an artificial intelligence model, the latest allegation in the long legal fight over copyrighted works between creative professionals and technology companies.Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, Daniel Okrent and several others alleged that Microsoft used pirated digital versions of their books to teach its Megatron AI to respond to human prompts. Their lawsuit, filed in New York federal court on Tuesday, is one of several high-stakes cases brought by authors, news outlets and other copyright holders against tech companies including Meta Platforms, Anthropic and Microsoft-backed OpenAI over alleged misuse of their material in AI training.The authors requested a court order blocking Microsoft’s infringement and statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work that Microsoft allegedly misused.Generative artificial intelligence products like Megatron produce text, music, images and videos in response to users’ prompts
Meta wins AI copyright lawsuit as US judge rules against authors
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has won the backing of a judge in a copyright lawsuit brought by a group of authors, in the second legal victory for the US artificial intelligence industry this week.The writers, who included Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, had argued that the Facebook owner had breached copyright law by using their books without permission to train its AI system.The ruling comes after a decision on Monday that Anthropic, another major player in the AI field, had not infringed authors’ copyright.The US district judge Vince Chhabria, in San Francisco, said in his decision on the Meta case that the authors had not presented enough evidence that the technology company’s AI would cause “market dilution” by flooding the market with work similar to theirs. As a consequence Meta’s use of their work was judged a “fair use” – a legal doctrine that allows use of copyright protected work without permission – and no copyright liability applied
Summer calls for chilled red wine
‘I don’t have rules’: cooks on making perfect porridge at home
How to turn the whole carrot, from leaf to root, into a Moroccan-spiced stew – recipe | Waste not
Empanadas and stuffed piquillos: José Pizarro’s recipes for green peppers
Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy recipe for mini parmesan, apple and rosemary scones
How to make perfect cheese arepas – recipe | Felicity Cloake