British police have opened a criminal investigation into politician Peter Mandelson over alleged misconduct in public office related to his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. The British government says newly released Epstein files include documents that suggest Mandelson may have shared market-sensitive i.<\/b>
\nBritish police on Tuesday opened a criminal investigation into politician Peter Mandelson over alleged misconduct in public office related to his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The U.K. government says newly released Epstein files suggest Mandelson \u2013 a former Cabinet minister, ambassador and elder statesman of the governing Labour Party \u2013 may have shared market-sensitive information with the convicted sex offender a decade and a half ago.
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London\u2019s Metropolitan Police force said detectives had reviewed reports of misconduct and decided they met the threshold for a full investigation.
Commander Ella Marriott said the force \u201chas now launched an investigation into a 72-year-old man, a former government minister, for misconduct in public office offenses.\u201d
Misconduct in public office carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Opening an investigation does not mean Mandelson will be arrested, charged or convicted.
But his friendship with Epstein has now cost him his political career. Mandelson said Tuesday he was resigning from the House of Lords, Parliament’s upper chamber, to which he was appointed for life in 2008.
The Speaker of the Lords, Michael Forsyth, said Mandelson had informed officials he will retire effective Wednesday.
The announcement came as the British government prepared legislation to eject Mandelson from the Lords and remove the noble title, Lord Mandelson, that came with his seat in the chamber. Mandelson will retain the title after he retires unless lawmakers pass legislation to strip it from him \u2014 something that has not been done for more than a century.
A trove of more than 3 million pages of Epstein-related documents released by the U.S. Justice Department has brought excruciating revelations about 72-year-old Mandelson, who served in senior government roles under previous Labour governments and was U.K. ambassador to Washington until Prime Minister Keir Starmer fired him in September over his ties to Epstein.
The newly released files contain emails from Mandelson to Epstein passing on nuggets of political information, some of which critics say may have broken the law.
Starmer told his Cabinet on Tuesday that he was \u201cappalled\u201d by the revelations in newly released Epstein files, and was concerned there are more details still to emerge.
Starmer spokesman Tom Wells said that the government had sent police its assessment that the Mandelson-Epstein documents contained \u201clikely market-sensitive information\u00a0\u00bb about the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath that shouldn’t have been shared outside of government.
Among the revelations in the files:
\u2014 In 2003-2004, bank documents suggest Epstein sent three payments totaling $75,000 to accounts linked to Mandelson or his partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva. Mandelson has said that he doesn’t remember receiving the money and will investigate whether the documents are authentic. But he resigned from the governing Labour Party on Sunday, saying he didn\u2019t want to cause the party \u201cfurther embarrassment.\u201d
\u2014 In 2008, Epstein avoided federal prosecution by pleading guilty to state charges in Florida of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail. Emails and text messages show that Mandelson\u2019s friendship with Epstein continued after the financier\u2019s sentence.
\u2014 In 2009, Epstein sent da Silva 10,000 pounds (about $13,650 at today\u2019s rates) to pay for an osteopathy course. Mandelson told The Times of London that \u201cin retrospect, it was clearly a lapse in our collective judgment for Reinaldo to accept this offer.\u201d
\u2014 Also in 2009, Mandelson, then business secretary in the U.K. government, appears to have told Epstein he would lobby other members of the government to reduce a tax on bankers\u2019 bonuses.
\u2014 The same year, Mandelson sent Epstein an internal government report discussing ways the U.K. could raise money after the 2008 global financial crisis, including by selling off government assets. Mandelson wrote: \u201cInteresting note that\u2019s gone to the PM.\u201d
\u2014 In May 2010, Mandelson messaged Epstein that \u201csources tell me 500 b euro bailout\u201d is almost complete. The message was dated hours before day European governments announced a 500 billion euro deal to shore up the single currency.
Epstein died by suicide in a jail cell in 2019, while awaiting trial on U.S. federal charges accusing him of sexually abusing dozens of girls.
U.K. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said that Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein was \u201ca betrayal on so many levels.\u201d
\u201cIt is a betrayal of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein that he continued that association and that friendship for so long after his conviction,\u201d Streeting told the BBC. \u201cIt is a betrayal of not just one but two prime ministers,\u201d he said, referring to Gordon Brown, the U.K. leader between 2007 and 2010, and Starmer.
An email requesting comment on the documents was sent to Mandelson through the House of Lords.<\/p>\n