Peter Mandelson, former UK ambassador and friend of Jeffrey Epstein, has been arrested.
London’s Metropolitan Police force said “officers have arrested a 72-year-old man on suspicion of misconduct in public office” at an address in north London.
It did not name Mandelson, in keeping with British police practice, but the suspect in the case has previously been identified as Mandelson.
Police are investigating Mandelson over documents suggesting he passed sensitive government information to Epstein a decade and a half ago. He does not face any allegations of sexual misconduct.
He was escorted out of his London home by plainclothes officers, according to the Times.
Police said they were searching his London home as well as his property in Wiltshire.
The Epstein files released in January contained more explosive revelations about Mandelson’s ties to Epstein, whom he once called “my best pal.”
Messages suggest that Mandelson passed on sensitive — and potentially market-moving — government information to Epstein in 2009, when Mandelson was a senior minister in the British government.
That includes an internal government report discussing ways the UK could raise money after the 2008 global financial crisis, including by selling off government assets. Mandelson also appears to have told Epstein he would lobby other members of the government to reduce a tax on bankers’ bonuses.
Earlier in February police searched two properties linked to Mandelson.
At the time Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Hayley Sewart said that “officers from the Met’s Central Specialist Crime team are in the process of carrying out search warrants at two addresses, one in the Wiltshire area, and another in the Camden area.
“The searches are related to an ongoing investigation into misconduct in public office offences, involving a 72-year-old man.”
His arrest comes four days after Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew, was arrested on suspicion of a similar offence related to his friendship with Epstein.
Mandelson was fired from his diplomatic post in September after emails were published showing that he maintained a friendship with Epstein after the financier’s 2008 conviction for sex offences involving a minor. When more details emerged in documents released by the US Justice Department last month, police opened a criminal probe.
The Epstein files suggest that Mandelson passed on sensitive — and potentially market-moving — government information to Epstein in 2009, when Mandelson was a member of the then-government.
The decision to appoint Mandelson nearly cost British PM Sir Keir Starmer his job as questions swirled around his judgement in someone who has flirted with controversy during a decades-long political career.
Mandelson’s many roles
Mandelson has been a major, if contentious, figure in the centre-left Labour Party for decades. He is a skilled — critics say ruthless — political operator whose mastery of political intrigue earned him the nickname “Prince of Darkness.”
The grandson of former Labour Cabinet minister Herbert Morrison, he was an architect of the party’s return to power in 1997 as centrist, modernizing “New Labour” under Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Mandelson served in senior government posts under Blair between 1997 and 2001, and under Prime Minister Gordon Brown from 2008 to 2010. In between, he was the European Union’s trade commissioner. Brown has been particularly angered by the revelations and has been helping police with their inquiries.
Mandelson twice had to resign from government during the Blair administration over allegations of financial or ethical impropriety, acknowledging mistakes but denying wrongdoing.
He later returned to government and was back on the political front line when Starmer named him ambassador to Washington at the start of US President Donald Trump’s second term. Mandelson’s trade expertise and comfort around the ultra-rich were considered major assets. He helped secure a trade deal in May that spared Britain some of the tariffs Trump has imposed on countries around the world.
The status of the deal is now up in the air after Trump announced a new set of global tariffs in the wake of a US Supreme Court decision quashing his previous import tax order.
– AP with Stuff