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Lord Peter Mandelson did not disclose in the House of Commons register two flights he took at Jeffrey Epstein’s expense in 2003 worth a total of $7,486.
The peer, a former MP and Labour cabinet minister, was sacked last week as UK ambassador to Washington over his close friendship with the disgraced financier.
The flights appear in a cache of around 33,000 pages of documents released on September 2 by the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee.
Among the documents is Epstein’s account with a New York travel agent he used to arrange flights for staff and acquaintances. It refers to two flights for “MandelsonPeter”, one on April 4, 2003, costing $3,844.90 and the other on April 11, 2003, priced at $3,642.06.
Mandelson, who was an MP at the time, did not log the travel in the MPs’ register of interests. Parliamentary rules at the time said visits outside the UK costing over £564 and paid for by others must be declared if they related to the MP’s role. They also required MPs to disclose any benefits “which might reasonably be thought by others to influence his or her actions” as a parliamentarian.
The documents do not state where Mandelson travelled to or why. The Labour peer did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2002 Mandelson tried to broker a meeting between Epstein and Sir Tony Blair, the then prime minister, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Sir Alistair Graham, chair of the government’s Committee on Standards in Public Life from 2003 to 2007, said there was a “very strong case” that he should have declared the trip funded by Epstein.
“I think if there was any hint that it had a connection with his political role, then there can be no doubt about it. He should have declared it,” he said.
Steve Goodrich, head of research and investigations at Transparency International, said MPs were supposed to report any gifts they receive arising from their position in parliament.
“The known chronology of events presents reasonable grounds to ask whether, given Mr Mandelson’s role as an MP at the time, these interests should have been registered,” he said. “There is a clear public interest in clarifying why these benefits were not reported to parliamentary authorities in 2003.”
In 2003 Mandelson was a backbench MP, having lost his previous cabinet job as secretary of state for Northern Ireland. He re-emerged in a senior role in November 2004 when he was appointed as European Commissioner for trade.
According to the register, Mandelson recorded trips to Madrid, Bahrain, Qatar, Warsaw and Moscow in 2003, paid for by a variety of event organisers and governments.
The Epstein flight receipts, first reported by the BBC, was the first time financial evidence of Epstein paying for Mandelson’s travel has been disclosed.
Mandelson was dismissed last week after emails leaked to Bloomberg showed him expressing deep affection for Epstein even after the disgraced financier was convicted of soliciting prostitution from minors. “Your friends stay with you and love you,” said one.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer subsequently said that he was particularly appalled by Mandelson’s suggestion in the emails that Epstein’s conviction was wrongful and should have been challenged.
Mandelson has expressed regret for being a confidant of Epstein “for far longer than I should have done”. He has said: “I regret ever meeting him . . . I regret even more the hurt he caused to many young women.”
Additional reporting by Jonathan Vincent
