David Stern

Stern's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was both financial and operational. He drafted the description of Financial Trust Company that positioned Epstein's USVI entity as "the independent, private investment arm of JP Morgan," with himself heading "the European investments" and reporting "directly to the Chairman" ¹. Epstein confirmed this framing to Stern in explicit terms: "financial trust is joint venture, all the guarantees and reputational risk will only be JP Morgan... they will deal the head of the private bank, jes staley, with 1.5 trillion dollars under management and the chairman jamie" ².

This was not a loose consultancy. In March 2011, Stern proposed a formal structure to Epstein: "Witan Group private co with JPM people on board. DS employed by JPM either CEO Special Situations Group (can not have word China in the name) or Special Advisor to Jes... DS reports to Jes, and close contact with both Emilio + Gaby. For JPM political reasons: DS officially based in two offices: London + Hong Kong" ³. The proposal reveals that the separation between Witan and JPMorgan was cosmetic — a "political" arrangement where Stern would report to Jes Staley while maintaining the appearance of independence. He renamed his UK company from Asia Gateway Ltd to Witan Group Ltd on May 4, 2011, after obtaining Epstein's permission ⁴. The name itself, from the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot (council of nobles), was researched by Stern and approved by Prince Andrew before adoption.

Stern also served as Epstein's connector to senior banking relationships. In August 2009, he pitched a deal with Sal Oppenheim, the German private bank, urgently requesting from Epstein "a brief summary on JEE, Financial Trust Co, DS role, contact details, JEE contact details, Jes Staley" because "the Chairman von Krockow of Sal Opp is awaiting NOW" and "they are about to close with DB" ⁵. Staley provided his personal cell number for a three-way call, establishing Stern as a direct conduit between JPMorgan private banking and Epstein's European deal pipeline.

Stern's central structural role was as the primary intermediary between Epstein and Prince Andrew. He organized Andrew's Asian tours, managed the Duke's commercial meetings, and reported back to Epstein while maintaining deliberate invisibility. On September 6, 2011, Stern wrote to Epstein: "I am going with PA to China on 23 October (Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong), then private weekend in Zheijiang, then two days in Kuala Lumpur. Most meetings by now are organised by me except mayors and governors and nothing in KL. I stay in the background/hidden, just make the arrangements" ⁶. Three copies of this email survive in the corpus.

An August 28, 2013 email to Epstein described the commercial logic in explicit terms: "PA has access to decision makers and capital (but no deal flow) such as China, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait. Kleinwort Benson is a UK bank with merchant banking aspirations, and wanting to do international deals. What is the right structure to combine this? I am the connecting piece joining Kleinwort formally? What are the terms? Or JV with my entity Witan?" ⁷. This is the most explicit documented statement of the three-party commercial arrangement: Prince Andrew supplies sovereign access, Stern provides execution capability through Witan, and Epstein designs the structure. Kleinwort Benson, later acquired by Societe Generale in 2016, would have provided institutional banking infrastructure.

The relationship extended beyond deal-making. Stern visited the Sanger Institute in Cambridge with Andrew in February 2016 ⁸, organized Epstein's girlfriend Karyna Shuliak to attend Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace in April 2016 ⁹, was appointed director of St. George's House trust at Windsor Castle in 2016, and was seated directly left of Queen Elizabeth at St. James's Palace. He resigned from Andrew's Pitch at Palace initiative in 2019 following Epstein's arrest.

Stern functioned as a multi-directional intelligence relay for Epstein, routing information and access requests across Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Gulf, and Anglo-American channels. Between 2010 and 2017, he served as Epstein's Russia-China intelligence source, providing intel on Oleg Deripaska's Beijing hutong property (June 2011), connecting Yuri Milner to Li Bo Tan (described as a CCP princeling) through the Deripaska network (September 2011), and facilitating introductions between Russian oligarchs and Chinese elite.

The Gulf dimension was equally active. In June 2017 — just 23 days after Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain imposed their blockade on Qatar — Stern pitched Epstein on an accelerated IPO of Al Jazeera on NASDAQ or the London Stock Exchange, with Witan Group presenting the plan, introducing key investors, and selecting global coordinator banks ¹⁰. Four months later, in October 2017, Stern told Epstein: "Chairman of PIF Saudi Arabia has invited me to Riyadh on Oct 24-26. I am going. Seem like a lot of your friends are there too: Leon Black, Tom Barrack, Sultan etc" ¹¹. Playing both sides of the Gulf crisis — advising Qatar while attending Saudi Arabia's flagship investment summit — mirrors the documented both-sides pattern that characterized Epstein's own approach to geopolitical engagement.

In June 2018, the intelligence brokerage intensified. On June 12, Stern told Epstein he was "going to Tokyo tomorrow to meet Softbank COO (former Sprint Chairman)" — Marcelo Claure ¹². Two days later, on June 14, he asked Epstein: "Ask Bannon to get me to North Korea? I want to buy prime real estate. I have the money" ¹³. Earlier, in April 2017, Stern had relayed Chinese intelligence to Epstein: "my senior Chinese friends tell me the top gave Trump the go ahead to take on North Korea." The simultaneity of Stern meeting SoftBank's COO in Tokyo, requesting Steve Bannon-facilitated access to Kim Jong Un, and relaying Chinese government signals reveals a figure operating as an intelligence broker across at least five state-level channels in a single week.

Most intriguingly, Stern's active Tokyo presence in February 2018 (with Prince Andrew, EFTA02527724) and June 2018 (SoftBank meeting) positions him as Epstein's primary Tokyo-based asset during the months leading to the Carlos Ghosn arrest on November 19, 2018. His combination of SoftBank executive access, routine intelligence relay to Epstein, and Prince Andrew intermediary role in Asia makes him the strongest candidate in the corpus for Epstein's reported "my guy" on the Ghosn situation — though this remains inference.

Stern operated through a web of entities designed to create jurisdictional flexibility while maintaining plausible separation from Epstein. His primary vehicle was Asia Gateway Ltd, a UK company renamed to Witan Group Ltd in May 2011. The Witan brand expanded rapidly: Witan Holdings was established in Hong Kong, and Witan Consultancy (Beijing) Ltd was registered in Beijing ¹⁴. Stern asked Epstein whether JPMorgan should sit on the boards of these entities or serve as accountant, revealing that the supposed independence of the Witan structure was contingent on Epstein and JPMorgan's design preferences.

The company's own self-description was revealing: "Witan Group is an independent, privately-owned investment firm... operates discreetly and has an unrivalled global network" ¹⁵. The word "discreetly" was not accidental — it mirrored Stern's own insistence on staying "background/hidden" in his work with Prince Andrew.

Stern's deal pipeline through these vehicles was substantial. In May 2012, he brokered Chinese healthcare investments with Richard Merkin of Heritage Provider Network, structuring signed agreements between Asia Gateway and Heritage that assessed Chinese RMB assets as potential security ¹⁶. By June 2016, he was pitching Epstein on a German distressed-asset strategy exploiting Basel III forced disposals: "We have Stefan (it doesn't get better for Germany corporate) and a little leverage and truly unique access esp financial institutions who need to unload assets due to Basel. We can buy loan portfolios, mortgages, real estate blocks with tens of thousands of units" ¹⁷. That same period, he proposed a Witan-Evergrande joint venture for UK and European real estate with Hui Ka Yan, then worth $10.6 billion according to Forbes ¹⁸. Stern also maintained a separate UK entity, Celestial Group, of which he became director in May 2016; its purpose is not documented in the corpus.

Stern exhibited a consistent pattern of operational security awareness that went beyond normal business discretion. His July 26, 2017 message to Epstein introducing ProtonMail as "apparently the safest email to use" ¹⁹ represents the earliest documented reference to encrypted email in the Epstein corpus, and may mark the origin point of the broader network's shift toward encrypted communications. The timing is notable: this was less than a month after the Al Jazeera IPO pitch and the Gulf blockade engagement, suggesting Stern was aware that the network's increasing geopolitical exposure warranted stronger communications security.

His insistence on remaining "background/hidden" while organizing Prince Andrew's commercial tours ⁶, his use of the word "discreetly" in the Witan Group company description, and his careful structuring of the Witan-JPMorgan relationship for "political reasons" all point to a figure who understood that visibility was a liability. The renaming of Asia Gateway to Witan — a term so obscure that Prince Andrew himself did not recognize it — was itself a form of obfuscation, replacing a geographically descriptive name with one that concealed the entity's actual focus.

Stern's relationship with Peter Mandelson, introduced in April 2010 and maintained through 2018 ²⁰²¹, provided a direct channel to one of the most experienced political operators in British public life. Mandelson, then Chairman of Lazard International, occupied the same intersection of politics, finance, and intelligence that Stern himself navigated. The relationship with Michele Faissola, documented via EFTA02646806, connected Stern to the former head of Deutsche Bank's asset and wealth management division — a node in the broader Deutsche Bank pipeline that served Epstein.