Mandelson was targeted by Russian states intelligence over a period of decades (Image: Getty)
Lord Mandelson spent decades in the crosshairs of Russian state intelligence, The Express understands, with security services allegedly fully aware of his status long before Sir Keir Starmer handed him Britain’s most prized diplomatic posting.
Moscow’s interest in Mandelson intensified after he took up the role of European Commissioner for Trade in 2004, sources said, and had been a known concern within the intelligence community for years before his Washington appointment.
Despite that, and despite a due diligence process that surfaced his connections to both Russia and China, he was still installed in the role — one that brings its occupant into daily proximity with the most powerful administration on earth.
Epstein under the microscope
Russian intelligence services are also understood to have kept a close watch on Mandelson’s association with Jeffrey Epstein — the American financier and serial child sex offender who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 awaiting trial on trafficking charges.
That relationship ultimately proved fatal to his ambassadorship. It emerged that Mandelson had lobbied for Epstein’s early release following an earlier conviction for procuring a minor for sexual abuse, forcing his departure from the Washington position.
Western security officials have concluded that while Epstein himself was almost certainly not a Russian operative, he functioned as a magnet for foreign intelligence activity. His social circle — which included figures of Mandelson’s prominence — would naturally have drawn sustained attention from hostile state actors.
Read more: Blow to special relationship as David Lammy hurls insult at Trump
Read more: Starmer ‘knew about Mandelson security red flags before appointment’
Missiles and a Putin ally
Sir Keir received a due diligence report during the appointment process that raised serious questions about Mandelson’s corporate history, reports The Telegraph. The document allegedly drew attention to his time as a non-executive board member at Sistema, a Russian conglomerate with a stake in defence firm RTI — a company whose technology feeds directly into Russia’s land-based missile early-warning capability. Sistema’s chairman was identified in the report as a close associate of Vladimir Putin.
The report is also said to have noted that Mandelson had continued to sit on Sistema’s board until June 2017 — years after Putin’s seizure of Crimea — and that his lobbying business, Global Counsel, had cultivated ties with interests in both Russia and China.
Mandelson’s long-standing connection to Oleg Deripaska — the oligarch once ranked as Russia’s wealthiest individual — has been a matter of public record since at least 2008, when Mandelson was serving in Brussels as EU trade commissioner. The enduring nature of that relationship suggests that both the Blair and Brown governments were aware of the Russian dimension to his network long before the current controversy erupted.
Rusnano emails
Documents surfaced in the Epstein files paint a further picture of Global Counsel’s Russian entanglements. They show the firm in active conversation with Rusnano, a technology investment vehicle wholly owned by the Kremlin.
A source with knowledge of those dealings told The Guardian the discussions predated Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and occurred during a window when British commercial engagement with Russia was actively encouraged by government.
With the vetting scandal refusing to die down, Sir Keir faces MPs on Monday amid intensifying demands for answers. He has consistently insisted that neither he nor those around him were aware Mandelson had failed his security assessment before taking up the post.
