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Lord Peter Mandelson has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office following claims he leaked confidential UK government memos to Jeffrey Epstein.
The Metropolitan Police launched a criminal investigation into the former cabinet minister this month after the London force said it had received a number of complaints, including a referral from the UK government.
The Met said on Monday: “Officers have arrested a 72-year-old man on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was arrested at an address in Camden on Monday, 23 February and has been taken to a London police station for interview.”
The force had previously searched two properties associated with the peer as part of the investigation. Mandelson has denied wrongdoing.
Television reports showed a grim-faced Mandelson being led from the front door of his luxury home in London’s Regent’s Park by two detectives. He got into a waiting unmarked police car.
Mandelson retired from the House of Lords on the same day that news broke of the police investigation. He retains his title, but the government is examining urgent legislation to remove his life peerage.
The latest tranche of the so-called Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice in January showed that Mandelson, while he was both UK business secretary and de facto deputy prime minister, passed government information to the convicted sex offender in 2009 and 2010.
This included details of a €500bn EU bailout of the Eurozone and a Downing Street memo setting out plans for a £20bn asset sale and tax changes.
The Cabinet Office has passed to the police its internal assessment of some of Mandelson’s emails to Epstein, and of the controls that were in place around the market sensitive information contained within them.
The FT also revealed that in 2010 Mandelson, while a minister, had lobbied the US government on behalf of Epstein and JPMorgan’s Jes Staley, deploying their talking points about financial crisis reforms related to banking regulation in conversations with an American official.
Other emails in the DoJ cache showed that Epstein sent Mandelson $75,000 in 2003 and 2004. Epstein also sent thousands of pounds in 2009 and 2010 to Reinaldo Avila da Silva, who was Mandelson’s partner at the time and is now his husband, according to the files.
Mandelson has said he has no recollection of receiving the $75,000, although he belatedly confirmed Epstein’s payments to Da Silva.
His arrest marks a striking fall from grace for a politician credited as one of the architects of New Labour alongside Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and who went on to serve at the highest levels of government, including as a cabinet minister, European trade commissioner and UK ambassador to the US.
Sir Keir Starmer has faced heavy scrutiny over his judgment in appointing Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to Washington in 2024, after the prime minister admitted he knew the peer kept ties with Epstein after he was jailed for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl in July 2008.
However, Starmer has said Mandelson “lied repeatedly” about the extent of his friendship with Epstein. Ministers, aides and officials are now bracing for the political fallout from the release of tens of thousands of documents relating to the Mandelson and his appointment as ambassador.
The first tranche of those papers will be published in early March, Darren Jones, first secretary to the prime minister, said on Monday.
Jones told the House of Commons that he was unable to say when the entire batch of documents would be published in full.
The minister said that some relevant documents will be held back because they are currently involved in the Met investigation, including correspondence from during the vetting process when Mandelson became US ambassador.