Disgraced former British politician Peter Mandelson discussed attending a 2010 gala hosted by Lebanese banks in Washington D.C. with convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, emails analysed by The New Arab show, shedding fresh light on how the pair explored financial opportunities in the Middle East.
The correspondence, exchanged in the summer of 2010, shows Mandelson encouraging Epstein to look at Lebanon’s financial sector, describing the country as a "growing market".
Epstein agreed to the proposal and replied, "everyone says Beirut is amazing [Sic]", suggesting interest in the city’s banking and investment sector.
While Mandelson's name is redacted from some of the emails revealed, other emails show his name clearly as the original sender of the same thread.
In another relevant but unrelated thread dated 31 July 2010, financier Tim Collins raised investment opportunities in Middle Eastern banks, prompting Epstein to describe Lebanon and Syria as "the next two hot spots".
There is no evidence Epstein ultimately acquired stakes or deposited funds in Lebanon and there is no public trace of the Lebanese bankers' gala in 2010. However, Lebanon's big banks (alpha banks) hosted routine events in the United States in previous years.
Earlier this week, newly released information, as part of a US Department of Justice investigation, revealed that Epstein also planned to access frozen Libyan state assets through UK and Israeli intelligence officials.
In an email sent by one of Epstein’s associates in July 2011, a plan is discussed to exploit "political and economic turmoil" in the country, in an apparent bid to seize Libyan funds frozen in Western countries.
In the communications, Epstein argued that Libya, which was going through political and economic turmoil at the time amid an uprising against dictator Muammar Gaddafi, served as a strategic opportunity for financial and legal investments.
Lebanon banking sector collapses
The newly analysed e-mail correspondence between Epstein and Mandelson comes years before the Lebanese banking sector collapsed spectacularly. After years of financial engineering and high-interest deposit schemes, the system unravelled in 2019, wiping out billions in savings and locking ordinary depositors out of their money.
Investigators have since accused the country’s former central bank governor, Riad Salameh, and leading banks of running what critics describe as a state-backed Ponzi-style structure that depended on constant inflows of foreign capital.
Mandelson, a senior architect of the UK Labour Party’s "New Labour" project and later a cabinet minister, faces a separate, current scandal in Britain over his alleged dealings with wealthy financiers and bankers that could be a conflict of interest given his links to government.
He is accused of forwarding government-level emails and market-sensitive information from his time as business secretary during the 2008 financial crisis to Epstein — including possible details on bailout plans, tax policy and asset sales.
He is also accused of sharing confidential UK planning documents as early as 2009–2010, prompting allegations of misconduct in public office.
The scandal has forced him to resign from the House of Lords and the Labour Party, while the Met police has opened an investigation into some of the allegations emerging from the Epstein files.
New document releases in recent months have prompted questions about how closely he remained tied to financial sector interests after the 2008 global crash, when he was business secretary overseeing elements of the UK’s response to the crisis.
Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019, has been the centre of one of the most notorious criminal cases in recent U.S. history.
The financier was accused by federal prosecutors of running a long-term sex-trafficking operation involving underage girls at properties in New York and Florida. Arrested in 2019, he died in custody while awaiting trial. Subsequent court filings and document releases exposed the breadth of his political and financial connections, drawing scrutiny to anyone who continued to associate with him after his 2008 conviction.