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Jes Staley’s legal team complained on Thursday that the banker had been subjected to “public humiliation” during a London court case over his ties with Jeffrey Epstein that the ex-Barclays boss said had put his marriage at risk.

The American banker insisted he was “not here to mislead anybody” in a legal challenge he has brought to overturn a ban and fine that UK authorities imposed on him for allegedly allowing Barclays to mislead the regulator about his relationship with the late sex offender.

Staley, 68, was testifying for a fourth day at a tribunal in London, which heard this week that he had sexual intercourse with one of Jeffrey Epstein’s employees at an apartment in New York belonging to the deceased financier’s brother.

His barrister Robert Smith KC told the court that the banker’s legal team was “hugely concerned” after lawyers acting for the Financial Conduct Authority asked Staley about the consensual encounter.

“I crossed the Atlantic to be with this tribunal,” Staley said later under cross examination from the Financial Conduct Authority’s counsel. “I could have stayed at home.”

“I have been honest such that I put my marriage at risk in the last few days.”

The FCA, which banned Staley from holding senior positions in UK finance in 2023, has stressed throughout the proceedings that it is “not seeking to embarrass” the banker and that it has not accused him of being involved in or having knowledge of Epstein’s criminality.

The watchdog’s case is instead that Staley downplayed his ties to Epstein, and was not sufficiently candid with officials.

However, Smith said that “the public humiliation of Mr Staley” over the sexual encounter in Manhattan had “hit the press” and that the FCA “must have realised”. “The damage was done when that question was asked,” he said.

Leigh-Ann Mulcahy KC, for the FCA, put it to Staley on Wednesday that he “had sexual intercourse with a woman” at “Epstein’s brother’s apartment on East 66th Street?”, to which he responded “yes”.

The court heard that Staley said in a deposition related to separate proceedings in the US that he did not know it was Epstein’s brother’s apartment at the time but does now. Epstein had not known about the encounter, Staley told the court.

Mulcahy said she had dealt with the question as “fairly and sensitively as I could”. “We refute the suggestion this was done without notice,” she added.

She said the FCA was not seeking to invade Staley’s privacy but to establish the connections between him and Epstein, given that he disputes the two had a close personal relationship.

The case centres on two statements Barclays made to regulators in a 2019 letter, which Staley approved. The bank asserted that its chief executive “did not have a close relationship” with Epstein, and that Staley’s last contact with him was “well before” Staley had joined the UK bank.

The banker was quizzed at length on Thursday over his contact with Epstein, which the FCA argues continued indirectly after he became chief executive of Barclays using his daughter as a “vehicle”.

Asking Staley about the letter from Barclays, Mulcahy put it to the former chief executive that “the only person involved who knew the true position with all the facts was you, wasn’t it?”

Staley said he had been following instruction from Barclays’ legal counsel to define “contact” as being about “physical presence”.

He said he “severed” the relationship upon taking the Barclays job and insisted his daughter had not acted as a go-between.