Former UK ambassador Peter Mandelson has been detained as part of a misconduct investigation into his ties with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
According to Al Jazeera, the former official, who was a major figure in the UK’s Labour party for decades and previously served as ambassador to the United States, was taken away from his home in London by authorities on Monday, February 23.
Without directly naming Mandelson in keeping with its policy, the Metropolitan Police confirmed a 72-year-old man had been arrested “on suspicion of misconduct in public office” and taken to a London police station to be questioned.
Photos published by the UK’s The Times newspaper appeared to show Mandelson wearing khakis, a grey sweater, and a dark jacket being led into a vehicle by a plainclothes officer.
Mandelson, who still holds the British title of “Lord”, has been engulfed in scandal since a trove of emails released by the US Justice Department last month shed new light on his connection with the late Epstein.
The emails revealed a closer relationship than had been publicly known and that the 77-year-old shared information with Epstein when he was a minister in former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government.
Earlier this month, Mandelson, who was fired as ambassador to the US last year over earlier revelations about his relationship with Epstein, resigned from Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party and quit his position in parliament’s upper chamber.
