Britain’s political class is being shaken by a scandal the scale of which typically comes around only once in a generation, and the man at the heart of it was once seen as the savior of the party that is currently in power.
Peter Mandelson, a former British ambassador to the United States who is credited with helping to create the modern version of the Labour Party that propelled Tony Blair to power in 1997, is now facing a criminal investigation stemming from the US Justice Department’s latest release of material relating to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Mandelson, 72, is accused of passing on market-sensitive information that was of clear financial interest to Epstein in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister at the time, said Tuesday that he has written to the police with information relevant to its investigation and slammed Mandelson for his “inexcusable and unpatriotic” act.
The scandal may have been less potent if Mandelson — who was twice previously forced to resign from government due to his ties to wealthy individuals — had not been plucked from the private sector by Prime Minister Keir Starmer to serve as Britain’s ambassador to Washington, despite his well-known friendship with Epstein.
Although Starmer fired Mandelson as ambassador after just seven months in Washington during the fallout from an earlier release of Epstein files, the prime minister’s initial decision to appoint him has snowballed into a crisis for his beleaguered Labour government, which could yet result in more political scalps.
The Justice Department’s latest release of files shows the depth and extent of their relationship was greater still. Among the documents is an email exchange from 2009 in which Mandelson, while serving as business secretary in Brown’s government, appeared to leak to Epstein detailed policy measures that the cabinet was considering in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
In another exchange from December 2009, Epstein and Mandelson discussed Britain’s plans to impose an additional tax on bankers’ bonuses as a punitive, one-off measure following the crash. Mandelson appeared to suggest that the head of JP MorganChase should call Alistair Darling, then Britain’s finance minister, and “mildly threaten” him. According to Darling’s memoirs, published two years before his death in 2023, the call was duly made.
Mandelson also appeared to tip off Epstein that the European Union was planning a €500 billion bailout to prop up the euro, also in the wake of the financial crisis.
Newly released bank statements also appear to show that between 2003 and 2004, Epstein paid a total of $75,000 into bank accounts linked to Mandelson. Email exchanges suggest that the financier may have sent £10,000 to Reinaldo Avila da Silva, Mandelson’s husband, to help fund his osteopathy course.
A spokesperson for Mandelson told British media that neither the former ambassador nor da Silva “has any record or recollection of receiving payments in 2003 and 2004 or know whether the documentation is authentic.” CNN has been unable to contact Mandelson.
