Lord Peter Mandelson has resigned from the Labour Party after it emerged that accounts in his name were sent $75,000 by Jeffrey Epstein.
Documents released by the US Department of Justice indicate that the life peer received three installments of $25,000 from Epstein in 2003 and 2004.
However, Mandelson said he had no knowledge of the payments.
In a letter to Labour's general secretary, Lord Mandelson wrote: "I have been further linked this weekend to the understandable furore surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and I feel regretful and sorry about this."
He added: "Allegations which I believe to be false that he made financial payments to me 20 years ago, and of which I have no record or recollection, need investigating by me.
"While doing this I do not wish to cause further embarrassment to the Labour Party and I am therefore stepping down from membership of the party.”
Dubbed the ‘Prince of Darkness’, Mandelson wielded power at the top of the Labour Party for more than four decades.
He was appointed party director of communications by Neil Kinnock in 1985, before serving as an MP between 1992 and 2004.
A key figure in the cabinets of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Mandelson frequently courted controversy, most recently in September 2025, when he was sacked as US Ambassador by Keir Starmer over his links to Epstein.
According to the BBC, on 14 May 2003, a payment of $25,000 was sent to the Barclays bank account of Reinaldo Avila da Silva - Mandelson’s then-partner.
“Peter Mandelson” is named as a beneficiary in the payment.
The second and third payments, both $25,000, were made to two HSBC accounts in June 2004.
In both, "Peter Mandelson" is the only person named, again as a beneficiary.
It is unclear if the three payments ever made it into any of the named accounts.
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“I have no record and no recollection of receiving these sums and do not know if the documents are authentic," Mandelson said on Sunday.
“I can say clearly, though, I regret ever having known Epstein. I was wrong to believe Epstein and swallow his lies following his conviction and to continue my association with him afterwards. I deeply regret doing so and apologise unequivocally to the women and girls who suffered”.
Mandelson was a friend of Epstein for more than a decade in the 2000s, including after the disgraced financier was convicted for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
After the 2008 conviction, he told Epstein: “I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened. I can still barely understand it.”
Mandelson has maintained that he was ‘kept separate’ from the late paedophile's ‘sexual side’ because he is gay.
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