LONDON — Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to the United States and one of his country’s most influential and controversial political figures of the past three decades, resigned from the Labour Party Sunday night and may face removal from the House of Lords amid renewed scrutiny over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender.
Mandelson, on a leave of absence as a member of the House of Lords, said he did not want to cause “further embarrassment” to the party.
He resigned after the Financial Times reported documents amid newly released files from the U.S. Department of Justice that appear to show Epstein made a series of payments totaling about $75,000 to accounts linked to Mandelson when he was a Labour member of Parliament in the early 2000s.
The files newly released by the Justice Department files also include an undated photograph of a man who appears to be Mandelson in a T-shirt and underwear alongside an unidentified woman. Mandelson told the BBC he could not place the location or the identity of the woman or “think what the circumstances were.”
In a letter to Labour officials made public Sunday, Mandelson insisted he had no record or recollection of the payments from Epstein and that the allegations “need investigating by me.” But he acknowledged that the weekend’s revelations further entangled him in the “understandable furor” surrounding Epstein and that he was stepping down from the party.
“I want to take this opportunity to repeat my apology to the women and girls whose voices should have been heard long before now,” Mandelson wrote.
The controversy marks the latest twist in a scandal that has dogged the veteran politician since Mandelson was dismissed in September as Britain’s ambassador to Washington by Prime Minister Keir Starmer after communications emerged showing a closer relationship with Epstein than Mandelson had admitted.
The most recent revelations suggest that three payments of about $25,000 were made to Mandelson or his now-husband Reinaldo Avila da Silva at a time when Mandelson was serving as Britain’s business secretary. The records also show that Epstein transferred a separate $10,000 to da Silva in 2009 after da Silva had requested help paying for an osteopathy course.
Correspondence in the files suggest Mandelson had also advised the disgraced financier on how elements of government policy, including a proposed tax on bankers’ bonuses, might be changed.
“Trying hard to amend,” Mandelson wrote to Epstein in December 2009. He also may have passed an internal government memos discussing the tax to the financier, the Financial Times reported Monday.
Mandelson defended those efforts Sunday, telling the BBC that he was hearing concerns about the tax from across the financial sector and not just from Epstein.
Mandelson, 72, a key architect of Tony Blair’s New Labour resurgence in the 1990s, was already facing criticism from opposition lawmakers before the weekend’s revelations.
Conservative Party figures called Monday for an independent inquiry into his appointment as ambassador and the broader implications of the Epstein files.
Labour officials said the party would continue to investigate complaints related to Mandelson. Some Labour members of Parliament said Mandelson, along with Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, the now former prince, should testify before a congressional committee investigating Epstein.
Photos from the latest Epstein files appear to show Mountbatten Windsor, who was stripped of his prince and Duke of York titles and exiled from his longtime royal residence because of his Epstein ties, crouched on all foursover a prone female.
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