Peter Mandelson told Jeffrey Epstein that he was making "every effort" at his request to change the government’s policy on bank bonuses, months after the convicted trafficker paid thousands of pounds to the husband of Britain’s then business secretary.<\/p>\n
Emails released by the US Department of Justice shed new light on the close relationship between the disgraced financier and Lord Mandelson. The documents include correspondence in September 2009 between Epstein and Lord Mandelson’s husband, Reinaldo Avila da Silva, who demanded the financier pay him \u00a310,000 to finance an osteopathy course and other expenses. Epstein replies: \u201cI will transfer your loan amount immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
In separate emails exchanged in December 2009, Lord Mandelson, then business secretary in Gordon Brown’s government, appeared to agree to change government policy on taxing bankers’ bonuses. On December 9, 2009, then-Chancellor Alistair Darling announced a 50% "super tax" on bonuses to prevent wages from being inflated by taxpayer-funded bailouts. In an email exchange on Dec. 15, Epstein asked Mandelson whether the policy could be changed.<\/p>\n
Epstein and Lord Mandelson then discuss then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s prospects in the election the following May. "gb [sic] \u201cNeeds help in May, not another enemy,\u201d Epstein writes. The email chain about Mr. Brown is one of dozens between Epstein and Mandelson that reveal the closeness and length of the relationship. Other messages show the couple regularly exchanging news about his whereabouts, arranging a face-to-face meeting, discussing Lord Mandelson’s career options after Labor’s 2010 election defeat and joking about media coverage.<\/p>\n
Separate files show images of Lord Mandelson showing the former cabinet minister in his underwear talking to a woman in a bathrobe. A spokesman for Mandelson said: "No one can say who or where the photo was taken. Lord Mandelson has absolutely no idea or whether it has any connection to Epstein." Appearing in a photo in the Epstein files does not indicate wrongdoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction to the Epstein-Mandelson Relationship Peter Mandelson told Jeffrey Epstein that he was making "every effort" at his request to change the government’s policy on bank bonuses, months after the convicted trafficker paid thousands of pounds to the husband of Britain’s then business secretary. The Email Exchange Emails released by the US Department of Justice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[17641,23319,23318,8946,23317,23316,367,23320,594],"class_list":{"0":"post-30302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-2010-united-kingdom-general-election","9":"tag-alistair-darling","10":"tag-bankers-bonuses","11":"tag-jeffrey-epstein","12":"tag-osteopathy","13":"tag-peter-mandelson","14":"tag-prime-minister-of-the-united-kingdom","15":"tag-surtax","16":"tag-united-states-department-of-justice"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30304,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30302\/revisions\/30304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}