Lord Mandelson is under mounting pressure to resign after it was claimed he worked with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein on a £1billion deal involving a taxpayer-owned bank.
Emails seen by The Telegraph reportedly show that Mandelson, who was business secretary at the time, took advice from Epstein during the 2010 sale of an RBS energy trading arm to JP Morgan, just months after the disgraced financier was released from jail for child sex offences.
Epstein is said to have introduced Mandelson to Jes Staley, then a top banker at JP Morgan who has since been banned from the City over his links to the paedophile, and even referred to Mandelson affectionately as 'Petie' in messages.
The Labour peer's relationship with Epstein has come under extraordinary scrutiny after the release of a ten-page letter in which he described him as his 'best pal'.
The note, written for Epstein's 50th birthday album, gushed: 'Once upon a time, an intelligent, sharp-witted man they call "mysterious" parachuted into my life.'
