Epstein Data Wiki

Chip Packard

Properties2
tagsperson, banker, deutsche-bank, wealth-management, onboarding, reputational-risk, prytanee
aliasesChip Packard, Packard, Chip, Packard

12 min read

Named on the documents asChip Packard, with the title Managing Director, Head Wealth Management Americas, Deutsche Bank Wealth Management, taken from his own signature block; an earlier block gives the unit as Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas1
Size of the file800 documents on the exact phrase, and it is a floor — sheets exist that name him where the text layer has shredded the line beyond searching2
How much of it is Epstein406 of the 800 name Epstein; 525, or 66%, name Epstein or a named Epstein entity. The remainder is routine private-bank traffic from the same custodial file, which exists because prosecutors subpoenaed the Epstein relationship2
The act this page is built onDeutsche Bank’s own lawyers told federal prosecutors that he was involved in the decision to take Jeffrey Epstein on as a client, and in the decision to keep him after concerns were raised in January 20153
And the thing that keeps happeningThe bank could not readily produce the paperwork for that approval. Five years on, its own compliance reviewers were still asking for the memo, still asking for the e-mail chain, and recommending the approval be “refreshed” because the one on file “does not address what exactly is being discussed and approved”45
What no document read here showsWhat he was told about Epstein before approving; what he personally decided as against what his committee decided; or any view of his on any of it. No document read for this page records him speaking about Epstein in his own words
Covered elsewhere on this wikiDeutsche Bank · Jes Staley

Chip Packard was a Managing Director of Deutsche Bank and head of its wealth management business in the Americas. Nothing on this page is a finding of wrongdoing by him, and no document read for it alleges any. What the documents show is an approval with his name on it, and a bank that spent years unable to find the paper behind it.

What the bank told the prosecutors

On 24 December 2019, lawyers for Deutsche Bank wrote to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The sentence that matters is one line:

Mr. Packard was involved in the decision to onboard Mr. Epstein as a client, as well as the decision to maintain the relationship after concerns were raised in January 2015.3

Two decisions, not one. The bank is telling federal prosecutors that he was in the room both when Epstein was taken on and when the bank chose to keep him. The date matters: January 2015 is when, on the bank’s own account, concerns were raised, and the relationship continued.

The approval, in 2013

The earliest record of it read for this page is an anti-money-laundering escalation from 2013, which states the position as settled fact:

Chip Packard has reviewed and approved the on-boarding of the relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and obtained clearance from a reputational and AML risk perspective6

The sheet lists the attachments that were supposed to prove it, and their filenames are the plainest thing on the page: Jeffrey Epstein Clearance.pdf and Chip approval.pdf.6

Five years of looking for the memo

In 2018 the bank ran a periodic know-your-customer review, and the case was rejected. Among the reasons, a compliance reviewer wrote a note that recurs across the file:

C — Please check to see if there is a memo that was accompanied by Chip Packard’s approval. If there is none, I recommend “refreshing” the approval with current senior management. The current e-mail approval does not address what exactly is being discussed and approved.4

Read slowly, that is a compliance officer saying the bank’s approval for this client does not say what it approved. The remedy proposed is not to find the reasoning but to obtain a fresh approval from whoever now holds the seat, and that is what happened: the refresh was satisfied by an executive-committee approval from his successor.4

The search for the original went on inside the bank. Later in the same thread a reviewer asks:

Can you please locate the full e-mail chain that proves that Chip Packards approval actually refers to Epstein’s jail sentence?5

⚠ This page does not interpret that sentence beyond what it says. It is a request for proof that an approval on file addressed the client’s conviction at all, and it was made years after the approval was given and relied upon.

The same thread shows the reviewers unsure what the approval was even supposed to cover:

Are we looking for exco approval for prytanee specifically or for Epstein/southern financial?5

Prytanee

The 2018 review was of Prytanee LLC, and Prytanee is an art company. The bank’s own description of it, on the sheet, is not couched in banking language at all:

Jeffrey and Caroline share the same affinity for art and decided to become partners investing in artwork from up and coming artists together.7

The Caroline is Caroline Lang, of Sotheby’s in Switzerland. ⚠ She is a living third party, no document read for this page alleges anything against her, and this page makes no suggestion about her. The entity is registered in the U.S. Virgin Islands and was reviewed by the bank under the Southern Financial relationship. A file note describes its purpose as the acquisition, ownership and management of artwork for investment purposes, and records that artwork and the cash to buy it were its only assets.7

The reputational-risk machinery, and what it actually did

In January 2016 the question of a new Epstein account went to the bank’s reputational risk process, in a thread titled “Jeffrey Epstein/Southern Financial LLC - Rep Risk Approval” on which Packard was copied. On 19 January one participant wrote that he had “no further guidance on whether ARRC would permit a new brokerage account for Mr. Epstein or not.”8 Two days later the instruction was to obtain an updated External Due Diligence, “Level II” report.8

That report is a commercial background check. A banker explaining it internally called it “a report done by kroll report that costs $800 or so. RRC asked for it.”9

⚠ This page does not say the committee approved anything. What the documents show is a committee ordering a background report, not issuing an approval, and the page states the two separately because they are not the same act.

What the bank said about him after the arrest

Seven days after Epstein was arrested in July 2019, a Deutsche Bank managing director wrote a note asking what the bank had got wrong. It is headed “Problem statement”, and the example it reaches for is this one:

Find client cases where we rely on some prior decision and do not question a ‘borderline’ client relationship - example Epstein where clearance was given again and again despite negative media and other alerts always referring back to Packard/Caruso onboarding decision (even though both had long since left DB).10

That is the bank, in its own internal post-mortem, naming the onboarding decision as the thing that kept the relationship alive. Clearance “given again and again”, each time by pointing back at an approval made by two men who had both left the firm.

⚠ The note is a problem statement, not a finding. It is one manager framing a lessons-learned exercise, it makes no allegation against either man named, and this page reproduces it as what the bank said about its own process rather than as a judgement on him. The desk has not identified “Caruso” and does not guess.

Identification, and a warning about his surname

The 800 is a floor, and the reason is specific rather than general. Sheets exist that name him where the extraction has destroyed the line: one prints, on the image, RDC Alert #1 -- Cleared & APPROVED by Chip Packard, AML Compliance, and Pat Harris, which the text layer rendered as “Chip the database Packard, AML searches indicated Compliance, and Pat He has been…”, interleaving the line with text from elsewhere on the sheet. Those documents are not reachable by searching for his name and are not counted in the 800.2

⚠ THE BARE SURNAME IS UNUSABLE AND WAS NOT USED. Packard returns 1,005 documents, 205 of them outside his set, and that remainder is contaminated in a way that would fool a careless sweep: it contains Hewlett-Packard, including a fax gateway whose sender string reads “Hewlett Packard on behalf of Deutsche Bank”, putting the word Packard beside the words Deutsche Bank in documents that have nothing to do with him, as well as the Packard Foundation, an education executive, a physicist, and a California probate attorney whose first name really is Charles Packard.2

⚠ AND THE DESK DOES NOT ASSERT HIS LEGAL FORENAME. "Charles Packard" returns three documents. None is a bank record identifying him. One is a civil complaint against Deutsche Bank which describes a “Charles Packard” in exactly his role; the other two are wire reports naming a Charles Packard in a joint account with another person. No document read for this page equates “Chip” with “Charles”, and this page therefore does not.1

Footnotes

  1. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01356504, an internal e-mail of 20 January 2016 carrying his own signature block. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi: the title and unit are confirmed as printed, and no contact value from that block is reproduced. An earlier signature in the file gives the unit as Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas. ⚠ On the forename: the three "Charles Packard" documents are a civil pleading and two wire reports, and the desk marks the identification CANNOT-TELL rather than inferring it from a matching job description. ↩ ↩2

  2. Counts on the authoritative pages_fts route, scoped text_content, exact phrases, count(distinct efta_number). Base "Chip Packard" 800. Intersection with Epstein 406; with Epstein or a named Epstein entity 525. The bare surname (1,005) was NOT used as an identifier for the contamination reasons given on the page. The 800 is a floor: https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01431121 and https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01431239 name him on the image but not in a searchable form. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00016422, a letter of 24 December 2019 from counsel for Deutsche Bank to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi. The quoted sentence is the bank’s own characterisation of his role, given to prosecutors, and this page reports it as that rather than as an independent finding. ↩ ↩2

  4. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01421293 p. 7, internal Bates stamp EFTA01421300, and a further copy at https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01415304 p. 1. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi and completely unbarred. The note is one item in a rejection raised on a 2018 periodic know-your-customer review, case 01946825, of Prytanee LLC. The refresh was satisfied by an executive-committee approval given by his successor in the same seat; the desk names the committee as the documents do and does not characterise what it approved. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01421293 p. 15 and the same thread. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi. The missing apostrophe in “Packards” is the writer’s own. ExCo is the North America Executive Committee as the bank’s own policy documents in this release define it. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01356888, an anti-money-laundering escalation of 2013. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi, including the attachment filenames printed on the page. ↩ ↩2

  7. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01421293 and https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01415304, file notes on Prytanee LLC. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi, no bars on the quoted passage. Caroline Lang is named because the bank’s own file names her as the client’s partner in the entity; no document read for this page alleges anything against her. ↩ ↩2

  8. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01419226 p. 1, carrying a message of 19 January 2016 under the subject “Jeffrey Epstein/Southern Financial LLC - Rep Risk Approval” as forwarded the following day, and https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01373763 p. 1, the instruction of 21 January 2016 to obtain an updated Level II report, both copying Packard among others. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi. ARRC is the Americas Reputational Risk Committee, and RRC in these documents is the same body. ⚠ The text layer truncates two names on the second sheet, giving Todd Steven and Chip Packar; both are complete on the image. ⚠ Whether the account was permitted is CANNOT-TELL: no approval or refusal instrument is in the release, and the thread runs daily from 8 January to 2 February 2016 and then stops. Deutsche Bank office telephone numbers appear on these sheets and are not reproduced. ↩ ↩2

  9. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01365507 p. 1, an internal exchange of 2 February 2016 explaining the external enhanced due diligence report. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi. ⚠ The figure is $800, settled at the image and confirmed twice over: a second production of the same e-mail in a different typeface also prints a dollar sign, and this corpus contradicts itself — its text layer holds S800 for one copy and $800 for the other, of the same e-mail sent in the same minute. The page gives the sum as approximate because the writer himself wrote “or so”. ↩

  10. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01399467 p. 2, an internal Deutsche Bank message of 15 July 2019 from a managing director in the wealth management control function, seven days after Epstein’s arrest. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi; the quoted paragraph carries no redaction. ⚠ Other copies of this message in the release are continuation sheets that begin part-way through the quoted sentence, and quoting from those would amputate it. The citation here is to the copy that carries the sentence whole. The desk has not identified the second name in “Packard/Caruso” and makes no attempt to. ↩

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