Lord Mandelson once declared he was ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’ – but his penchant for the super-wealthy has been getting him in trouble for nearly three decades.
Labour’s Prince of Darkness has always enjoyed the finer things in life, and has never shied away from cultivating risky relationships to indulge in them.
As more details of his friendship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein come to light, 71-year-old Mandelson is finishing his political career in the way it began – embroiled in sleaze.
Catherine Macleod, a former special adviser to late Labour grandee Alistair Darling, said Mandelson has fallen victim to his ‘fatal attraction’.
‘He manages to work his way around people with influence and contacts,’ she told Times Radio.
‘He’s always been drawn to people in power and I spoke to a friend of his last night and said this is what’s going to get Peter again.
‘It is his fatal attraction to rich people that has plagued him throughout his political life.’
Geoffrey Robinson
Mandelson’s first scandal came in 1998, when it emerged he had accepted a £373,000 interest-free loan from Labour’s millionaire Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson to buy a house in trendy Notting Hill, West London.
At the time, the department of trade and industry – in which Mandelson was minister – was investigating alleged irregularities in Mr Robinson’s business dealings.
He was forced to resign as trade secretary, saying at the time: ‘Through my own misjudgement I’ve allowed the impression to be created of wrongdoing.
‘I should have been open about it – and in so doing I would have protected myself from the appearance of a conflict of interest. I didn’t and I have paid a very big price for it.’
The Hinduja brothers
Mandelson was forced to fall on his sword for a second time in 2001 over a row concerning a passport application from an Indian billionaire.
It was claimed Mandelson, then Northern Ireland secretary, had contacted the Home Office on behalf of businessman Srichand Hinduja, whose first application for UK citizenship was refused in 1990.
Mr Hinduja had just donated £1 million to the Millennium Dome project, which Mandelson was in charge of, and shortly afterwards his passport was granted.
One of the world’s richest families, Mr Hinduja and his brothers Gopichand and Prakash were defending themselves against criminal corruption allegations involving an arms deal at the time.
Mandelson strongly denied any wrongdoing, insisting he had made an ‘innocent inquiry’ on Mr Hinduja’s behalf.
Paul Allen and Peter Brown
To get away from his desk at the European Union, where he was then a trade commissioner, Mandelson spent New Year 2005 on the Caribbean island of St Barthélemy – rubbing shoulders with movie stars and business leaders.
During his trip, he a guest at a party thrown by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and the seventh richest man in the world, on the deck of his 414ft yacht Octopus.
At the time, Mr Allen was at the centre of a major EU investigation, as Microsoft was accused of abusing its near-monopoly in the software market.
The EU was threatening the firm with huge fines, and as a commissioner, Mandelson would have had a say in that – potentially affecting Mr Allen’s personal fortune.
It also emerged that Mandelson had celebrated New Year with Peter Brown, who managed the Beatles after the death of Brian Epstein.
At the time, Mr Brown’s public relations firm Brown Lloyd James was lobbying politicians over a delay to a complaint that one of its clients had made to the EU.
Mandelson denied any wrongdoing, saying he had only spoken to Mr Allen briefly, and had ‘complied with the rules at all times’ regarding his stay with Mr Brown.
Diego Della Valle
In 2006, shortly after Mandelson had imposed huge tariffs on cheap Chinese shoes, he was caught relaxing a luxury yacht belonging to Diego Della Valle – an Italian shoe tycoon.
It emerged that Mr Della Valle, who runs the exclusive shoe and handbag company Tod’s, had played host to the trade commissioner several times on the Italian island of Capri.
Mandelson had imposed an EU-wide 20 per cent tax on cut-price imports from Asia to protect European shoe companies like Tod’s. He denied any wrongdoing or conflict of interest.
At the time, a spokesman for Mr Della Valle said: ‘They are friends, and if you want to entertain your friend on holiday with a bowl of pasta and sunshine, what is the problem?’
Oleg Deripaska
Billionaire banker Nathaniel Rothschild took Mandelson on his private jet to visit Russian aluminium tycoon Oleg Deripaska in 2005.
The trio watched an ice hockey match in Siberia and partook of a traditional ‘banya’ sauna session, in which participants are hit with birch leaves.
Rothschild insisted the trip was ‘entirely recreational’ and that Deripaska wanted to meet the man responsible for EU trade policy ‘because Mandelson was an interesting and highly intelligent and, you know, fantastic guy’.
However, High Court judge Mr Justice Tugendhat later ruled that suggestion was ‘quite unrealistic’.
In 2008, Mandelson was spotted in Corfu on Deripaska’s luxury yacht, Queen K, alongside then shadow chancellor George Osborne.
He denied giving the Russian favourable treatment on aluminium tariffs at the EU, saying: ‘He has never asked for any favours, I have never given him any favours, and that is what the European commission in their examination of the issue has very firmly put on record.’
Jeffrey Epstein
Mandelson has repeatedly said that he regrets ever meeting the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, but the extent of their friendship is still coming to light.
A ‘birthday book’ compiled for Epstein’s 50th in 2003, released this week for the first time, contains a gushing ten-page greeting from Mandelson in which he described him as ‘my best pal’.
In one email sent the day before Epstein started a prison sentence for soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl, Mandelson wrote: ‘I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened.’
Perhaps for the last time, Mandelson’s obsession with the ‘filthy rich’ cost him his job.
