The government is under renewed political pressure to reveal whether Jeffrey Epstein played a role in discussions about the sale of a taxpayer-funded resources company during Labor’s last term in office.
Senior Conservatives have tabled a series of parliamentary questions demanding clarity over the $1.7 billion (£1.35 billion) sale of parts of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s Sempra joint venture to JP Morgan in 2010, when Lord Mandelson was business secretary.
The intervention follows revelations in a 2019 internal JP Morgan report that was later filed in a New York court. The document included emails in which Epstein claimed to have facilitated meetings between Mandelson and Jes Staley, then chief executive of JP Morgan’s investment banking division, at a time when the bank was exploring acquiring RBS’s commodities assets.
The exchange came months after Epstein was released from prison in the United States following his conviction for soliciting a minor, increasing scrutiny of his continued contact with senior political and financial figures.
In a written parliamentary question, Conservative Party leader and former business minister Kevin Hollinrake asked what records the Department of Business and Trade had relating to correspondence between Mandelson, Epstein and the Sempra transaction. Business Secretary Kate Dearden responded on behalf of the department that “such information is not readily available and could only be obtained at unreasonable cost.”
This answer was called into question by further answers to parliamentary questions from Mike Wood, a shadow Cabinet Office minister, which confirmed that records from the period are stored electronically and can be searched for keywords.
Commenting on the discrepancy, Hollinrake said the government needed to be “clear” about Mandelson’s role in the deal. “It is simply implausible to claim that it is too costly to retrieve records when the government admits that they are electronic and searchable,” he said, adding that this position “only fuels concerns that labor secretaries have something to hide.”
The Treasury Department responded separately to questions on the matter, saying it had conducted a “proportionate search” of its archives and found no evidence of correspondence or meetings between Epstein and Treasury secretaries or officials related to the sale. It stressed that oversight of RBS after its bailout was the responsibility of the Treasury.
A source close to Mandelson denied the allegations, calling them “nonsense” and stressing that there were no meetings with Epstein and that the business department played no role in the transaction. “It was a Treasury matter and he was not involved at all,” the source said.
RBS, which was bailed out by the government during the 2008 financial crisis, was forced to sell a number of assets under EU competition rules, including its stake in the resources company Sempra.
Mandelson was fired as British ambassador to the United States by Sir Keir Starmer earlier this year after his connection to Epstein was revealed. Meanwhile, Jes Staley was banned from holding senior positions in the UK financial services sector by the Financial Conduct Authority in July due to his links to Epstein.
Epstein died in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on additional charges of sex trafficking of minors. Recent releases of U.S. Justice Department documents detailing his network of associates have renewed scrutiny of his relationships with politicians and financiers on both sides of the Atlantic.
