Keir Starmer ignored warnings about Peter Mandelson’s ‘hyperlinks to Russia and China’
Keir Starmer ignored warnings about Peter Mandelson‘s links to China and Russia before appointing him US ambassador, documents released to Parliament show.
A ‘due diligence’ report drawn up for the Prime Minister warned Lord Mandelson had ‘links to Russia and China’ and was seen as ‘an advocate’ for cosying up to Beijing.
Sir Keir was also warned that the disgraced ex-Labour minister had pushed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) talking points on Hong Kong and attacked Donald Trump as a ‘bully and a mercantilist’.
The December 2024 document included a Daily Mail article that exposed how Lord Mandelson had served on the board of a company owned by a Russian defence firm.
The Cabinet Office document warned there was a ‘reputational risk’ to Lord Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, his past resignations from government, and lobbying by his firm Global Counsel.
It also highlighted a Mail article that revealed Lord Mandelson had served as a non-executive director of Russian conglomerate Sistema, the majority shareholder of defence tech firm RTI.
RTI produced radar and satellite communications for Russia’s missile early warning system and its chairman was Yevgeny Primakov, a Putin ally and former Russian prime minister. Lord Mandelson remained on the board until June 2017, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The website of Lord Mandelson’s lobbying firm Global Counsel ‘still contains his flowery account of his October 2018 meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping’, it added.
Former US ambassador Peter Mandelson pictured last year with Donald Trump in the Oval Office
Shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel said: ‘Keir Starmer knew about Mandelson’s shady dealings in Russia and China and yet he still appointed him Ambassador to the United States. That is simply unforgiveable.
‘Mandelson’s connections in countries that wish harm to our country are extremely alarming to everyone who cares about our national security. Starmer chose to ignore all that, rush through the due diligence process and get his man in place no matter the cost to our country.’
Emails from a trove of more than three million documents released by the US Department of Justice also reveal that Lord Mandelson’s business links to Russia and China went far beyond those included in the due diligence document.
The Mail has uncovered a 2010 email which shows the peer was offered a ‘first class round trip’ and a stay at a luxury hotel in Shanghai by a senior Chinese official just weeks after leaving government.
Lord Mandelson was offered the trip and invited to speak at a business forum by Dr Fang Xinghai, who held various senior roles with Chinese state-owned companies.
The official even gave Lord Mandelson pointers on what to say in his speech, including on how ‘liberal democracy faces a fundamental challenge’. The peer gave a keynote speech at the conference.
The emails show that Labour’s Dark Lord offered to help Jeffrey Epstein obtain a Russian visa via a billionaire oligarch with close links to Vladimir Putin.
They also suggest that Lord Mandelson ‘informally offered to assist with discussions around Russian privatizations’ of up to 900 companies, including Russian oil giant Gazprom, which was sanctioned following Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Lord Mandelson has consistently denied any wrongdoing and said that he did not act for financial gain.
Ahead of his appointment as US ambassador, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China provided a dossier on Lord Mandelson’s business dealings with Beijing to Congress and the British Government.
The dossier shows that Lord Mandelson met with a number of high-ranking CCP figures, including a June 2023 meeting with Liu Jianchao, who oversaw alleged attacks on Chinese dissidents.
It also suggests that the peer may have served as an advisor to the state-owned China International Capital Corporation as early as 2013.
Luke de Pulford, executive director of IPAC, said: ‘Mandelson’s firm had CCP state-owned enterprises as clients, and his frequent visits to meet Chinese state actors are well documented.
‘The fact these things don’t warrant a mention on his ‘due diligence’ checklist represents a catastrophic failure to understand Beijing’s strategy of elite capture.’
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing and Lord Mandelson said when the dossier was first reported that he ‘had no business dealings in China’.
Sir Keir on Thursday took responsibility for his ‘mistake’ in sending Lord Mandelson to Washington, as Downing Street denied there was a ‘cover up’ in the release of files related to the appointment.
