Meanwhile, emails in the files released on Friday also show Lord Mandelson tried to change government policy on a planned tax on bankers’ bonuses, following requests from Epstein.
“Trying hard to amend,” Lord Mandelson wrote to Epstein in December 2009. “Treasury digging in but I am on [the] case.”
At the time Lord Mandelson was business secretary in Gordon Brown’s government.
Lord Mandelson has told the BBC that every UK and international bank was making the same argument about the impact on UK financial services, adding: “My conversations in government at the time reflected the views of the sector as a whole not a single individual.”
The recently released bank statements, first reported by the Financial Times, external, appear to show three separate payments referencing Lord Mandelson, who was Labour MP for Hartlepool at the time, being sent from Epstein’s JP Morgan bank accounts.
The first, dated 14 May 2003, shows a payment was sent to a Barclays bank account where Reinaldo Avila da Silva – Lord Mandelson’s partner at the time – is named as “A/C”, typically an abbreviation for account.
In that payment, a “Peter Mandelson” is named on the account as “BEN”, which is often an abbreviation for beneficiary.
The second and third payments of $25,000 were made to HSBC accounts only days apart in June 2004. In both, “Peter Mandelson” is the only person named, again as “BEN”.
It is unclear if the three payments ever made it into any of the named accounts.