Britain’s former ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson, who is being investigated over emails he sent to his “best pal” Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested Monday amid fears that he was planning to flee the U.K., according to reports.
Mandelson’s lawyers claimed on Tuesday that his arrest was prompted by a “baseless suggestion” that he was preparing to leave the country and settle overseas.
The Guardian reported that London’s Metropolitan Police had received “intelligence” from a source that Mandelson, 72, was planning a trip abroad before he was arrested at his home in Camden.
But Mandelson’s lawyers said, “There is absolutely no truth whatsoever in any such suggestion.”
They further claimed that Mandelson had been arrested “despite an agreement with the police that he would attend an interview next month on a voluntary basis.”
“We have asked the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] for the evidence relied upon to justify the arrest,” the lawyers said. “Peter Mandelson’s overriding priority is to cooperate with the police investigation, as he has done throughout this process, and to clear his name.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Metropolitan Police for comment.
Mandelson, who was released on bail Tuesday morning with restrictions on any overseas travel, was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
He is accused of leaking sensitive government information to Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex trafficker, while serving as the U.K. business secretary in 2009 and 2010.
Just hours after his release on Tuesday, Mandelson sent a message to friends saying that the police had claimed he was about to flee to the British Virgin Islands and leave his husband, family home, and dog, The Times reports.
“I need hardly say complete fiction,” he reportedly wrote. “The police were told only today that they had to improvise an arrest. The question is, who or what is behind this?”
Mandelson served as an envoy to Washington under British Prime Minister Keir Starmer until he was fired in September over his ties to Epstein.
He resigned from the country’s left-wing Labour Party on Feb. 1 after the U.S. Justice Department’s latest Epstein files dump included an embarrassing image of him in his tighty-whities, which showed him passing potentially market-sensitive government information to the pedophile.
In one instance, Mandelson forwarded Epstein a confidential June 2009 memo written by a special adviser to then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that outlined ideas to shore up government finances and attract more private sector investment.
“Interesting note that’s gone to the PM,” Mandelson wrote.
“What salable assets?” Epstein responded.
Mandelson, who reportedly received three $25,000 payments from Epstein in 2003 and 2004, answered, “Land, property I guess.” The Labour government officially implemented the once-secret plan four months later.
A year later, Mandelson gave Epstein advance notice of a €500 billion ($590 billion) bailout to save the Euro that was not announced publicly until the following morning.
According to The Guardian, Epstein also sent thousands of dollars in 2009 and 2010 to Reinaldo Avila da Silva, who was Mandelson’s partner at the time and is now his husband.
