British police suddenly arrested former ambassador to the United States, European Commissioner, and Labour grandee Peter Mandelson over alleged misconduct because they believed he was about to flee to the Caribbean, a report states.
Lord Mandelson has denied that he was planning to skip the country and seek refuge in the Caribbean, suspicions of which are now reported to have triggered his arrest this week, and has even claimed to be the victim of a conspiracy against him. According to a statement from Mandelson’s lawyer, he had already agreed to interview by appointment with police officers weeks hence, but officers appeared at his address in central London on Monday afternoon to place him under arrest instead, after which he was interviewed under caution.
The arrest followed apparent revelations in the Jeffrey Epstein emails released in the United States, which allegedly showed Mandelson forwarding confidential government information to the financier and keeping up their relationship after Epstein had been released from prison for child sex offences. Mandelson denies wrongdoing.
British broadsheet The Daily Telegraph claims Mandelson was forced to surrender his passport as part of his police bail conditions, and cited a Metropolitan Police source who states the decision to change from the scheduled interview in March to arrest on Monday was based on “new intelligence” for “clear operational reasons”.
Mandelson is said to have “told friends” after his release that he was never planning to go abroad, and even implied a conspiracy was afoot against him. The Times reports he said:
Despite a previous agreement between police and my legal team over a voluntary interview in early March, police arrested me because they claimed the Lord Speaker received information that I was about to flee to the British Virgin Islands and take up permanent residence abroad, leaving Reinaldo [his husband], my family, home and Jock [his dog] behind me.
I need hardly say complete fiction. The police were told only today that they had to improvise an arrest. The question is, who or what is behind this?
Mandelson’s lawyer hit the same points, saying in a statement:
Peter Mandelson was arrested yesterday despite an agreement with the police that he would attend an interview next month on a voluntary basis. The arrest was prompted by a baseless suggestion that he was planning to leave the country and take up permanent residence abroad.
There is absolutely no truth whatsoever in any such suggestion. We have asked the [Met] for the evidence relied upon to justify the arrest. Peter Mandelson’s overriding priority is to co-operate with the police investigation, as he has done throughout this process, and to clear his name.
The Lord Speaker, who presides over the UK’s upper chamber the House of Lords and who had the finger of suspicion pointed at him in Mandelson’s comments denied involvement, saying the claim he’d spoken to police to articulate concerns about an imminent escape to the Caribbean “entirely false and without foundation”.
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