In the early hours of November 25, 2004, a Gulfstream IV executive jet touched down in Rotterdam. On board were a crew of three and a solitary male passenger, the Daily Mail can reveal.
The passenger’s name was Peter Mandelson, former New Labour svengali and Cabinet minister. This was his first week in a new ‘top job’: that of European Union trade commissioner.
Later that day, commissioner Mandelson would attend the EU-Russia summit at the Binnenhof Palace in The Hague.
President Vladimir Putin was leading his country’s delegation. Trade between East and West was to be a key area of discussion.
Putin had just returned to Europe from a trade conference in Chile, and among his entourage on the South American trip had been Oleg Deripaska, the then-youthful metals oligarch who would soon be described as Russia’s richest man – and one of the ten wealthiest in the world.
At his peak net worth, in 2008, Deripaska was said to have $28billion in assets. Many wondered how he had acquired such a fortune, and so quickly.
His US visa was later suspended over alleged associations with organised crime; allegations he denied. Today, Deripaska is under British sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which has caused more than one million casualties.
Deripaska has long operated a fleet of luxury aircraft. One of the planes he controlled in November 2004 was a Bermudan-registered Gulfstream IV with the call sign VP-BNN.
This, we can reveal, was the aircraft which took Mandelson to the Netherlands. For reasons that remain unclear, the plane had collected Mandelson from Brussels, brought him to England for several hours and then taken him on the final leg to The Hague for the summit.
Why was Mandelson flying about Europe on a Deripaska jet on the eve of crucial EU-Russia trade talks? And why was he so very keen to get there as fast as possible?
Peter Mandelson was said to be ‘quite rude’ to air crew when he boarded the plane at Luton
The Gulfstream IV that took Mandelson to the Netherlands in 2004
This week, the Daily Mail spoke to a member of the flight crew on the Gulfstream. This individual, who has asked to remain anonymous, recalled that at Luton, Mandelson was so agitated to get to The Hague that night on time, he was ‘quite rude’.
‘We had a [take-off] slot time, but he turned up hours before that and demanded we go anyway, which we could not do,’ they revealed.
‘There were a couple of female staff who handled the hospitality of [business jet] passengers waiting for their aircraft to be readied. I said: “These charming ladies will look after you”, yet [Mandelson] was quite ratty in return. ‘Deripaska was always very genteel in comparison.’
They added: ‘Of course we found out later what it was. Deripaska’s business was aluminium and there was a discussion in The Hague about tax on [the metal] – and that is what [Mandelson] was so anxious to get to.
‘I don’t know how he would influence it himself, but he just wanted to be there without any delay.’
The EU Commission has confirmed that it has no record of this flight being declared by Mandelson, as it should have been. How to explain such an oversight?
‘It’s common in Russia for oligarchs to lend politicians their private jets,’ the crew member said. ‘Naturally, they expect something in return.’
There’s no hard evidence available to suggest that Mandelson was expected to provide an immediate quid pro quo. Nevertheless, the EU’s subsequent cut in aluminium tariffs – discussed at the summit in The Hague – hugely benefited the Russian economy and Deripaska in particular. He owned Rusal, the world’s biggest aluminium producer.
To confirm the details of these undeclared and unexplained Mandelson ‘ghost flights’, our inquiries took us from Russia to Bermuda and across Western Europe. The investigation took place over 15 years, due to ongoing legal cases and Mandelson’s fluctuating career.
Now we can present compelling evidence about the actions of the now disgraced former MP, Cabinet minister, EU commissioner and US ambassador – which should raise urgent questions about his proximity to Kremlin interests.
When Mandelson was sacked as HM’s envoy to the United States last September, it was not because of his links to Moscow – but to convicted paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein’s close friendship with the former Prince Andrew, which continued even after the former’s under-age child sex conviction, saw the latter lose his royal titles and accommodation. Mandelson’s similar loyalty to Epstein – who died in custody in 2019 – has had an equally deleterious effect.
Vladimir Putin and Oleg Deripaska at Sochi in 2008
He has had to leave the House of Lords, the Labour Party and various business roles. Last week, his country house (rented, as it happens, from his friend, financier Nat Rothschild) was raided by British police investigating potential misconduct in public office.
The release at the end of last month of three million files on Epstein by the US Department of Justice was devastating for Mandelson, who was mentioned almost 6,000 times.
Speculation grew that Epstein was a Kremlin asset. Where had all the New York money come from? Why had he so assiduously compromised, through sexual favours, so many influential men in the West?
Mandelson, for his part, is gay. The Epstein files showed that the tycoon gave thousands of pounds to Mandelson’s now husband to pay for educational courses, or simply as a stipend.
But they also drew attention back to Mandelson’s own cosy dealings with Putin’s inner circle. The files show that, on November 9, 2010, Epstein emailed Mandelson, saying: ‘I do not have a visa for Russia, it is a bank holiday in Paris today… any ideas how I can get one – on arrival?’
Mandelson replied: ‘Ben can get visa thru OD. Needs scans of your passports.’ ‘Ben’ is thought to refer to Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, the co-founder of Lord Mandelson’s lobbying firm Global Counsel. The ‘OD’ is Oleg Deripaska.
Mandelson sent a further email: ‘OD office helping on visas. Told him he sd meet u and of course he wants to. He’s travelling at moment.’
The files showed that Wegg-Prosser had visited Epstein at his infamous New York townhouse earlier in 2010, two years after the paedophile had been convicted of – and imprisoned for – soliciting prostitution and soliciting a minor.
They met to discuss the establishment of Global Counsel, the lobbying and consulting firm Wegg-Prosser and Mandelson were setting up in the wake of Labour’s election defeat.
Wegg-Prosser resigned as chief executive of Global Counsel last week following the latest Epstein revelations.
Peter Mandelson at The Hague in the Netherlands with Putin and EU Commission president José Manuel Barroso
Peter Mandelson with Jeffrey Epstein in one of the recently released batch of photographs
It was also reported last week that in 2008, MI6 was warned by ‘EU security services’ that Moscow was targeting the then EU trade commissioner – Peter Mandelson.
Public interest in the dealings between Deripaska and Mandelson – who twice resigned from Labour Cabinet posts over alleged improprieties – began in October 2008 with the so-called ‘Yachtgate’ scandal.
Shortly after Mandelson returned to Britain to become Gordon Brown’s Business Secretary, it emerged that he, his billionaire friend (and current landlord) Rothschild, then-shadow chancellor George Osborne and Tory fundraiser Andrew Feldman had all holidayed on Corfu that summer.
At the same time a super-yacht belonging to Deripaska, for whom Rothschild acted an ‘adviser’, was anchored off the island. Mandelson was a guest aboard it for three nights.
The vacation became a cause celebre after Osborne leaked embarrassing details of a conversation he had with Mandelson while they were both Rothschild’s guests.
Rothschild retaliated by claiming Osborne and Feldman tried to solicit what would have been an illegal political donation from Deripaska. The Tories said it had been Rothschild’s suggestion.
Very murky. And it grew more so when Mandelson’s Brussels spokesman issued a statement that the former commissioner had previously met Deripaska only at social events in 2006 and 2007 and that they had never discussed aluminium tariffs.
These dates were not accurate. Mandelson later admitted having first met Deripaska in 2004. It seemed this occurred at the Café Pushkin in Moscow in October of that year. Clearly, they hit it off.
Read More
Explore the Epstein Files at the touch of a button: Read more of the most explosive allegations
The Daily Mail discovered that in January 2005, Mandelson was flown by Rothschild’s private jet from Switzerland to Moscow.
We reported that the purpose of his trip was to attend a dinner thrown by Deripaska in the private room of a restaurant. Also present were several executives from American aluminium company Alcoa.
The Americans were there to celebrate a £500million deal they had struck with Deripaska’s metals giant, Rusal, for the sale of two Russian plants.
As the plants exported metal into the EU and tariffs on those imports were the realm of the trade commissioner, this newspaper suggested that Mandelson’s presence in the room – unknown to EU officials – could expose him to serious questions of conflict of interest.
Mandelson did not complain about the story. But Rothschild, who would later claim he had no idea that the Alcoa gathering was to mark a business deal, sued the Daily Mail.
He said the article was wrong and portrayed him as having taken advantage of his friend for his own business benefit. He sought ‘heavy damages’. The case went to trial in early 2012.
You might wonder if he was wise to do so. Because in the course of the trial, Rothschild revealed that while in Moscow, Mandelson also had a private, unofficial and undeclared dinner with the Russian finance minister, arranged by Deripaska.
Mandelson was then flown 2,000 miles to Siberia on one of Deripaska’s private jets. While there, he was flogged in a traditional Russian ‘banya’ or sauna, stayed at the oligarch’s dacha and toured his metal plants wearing a Rusal hat.
Never mind that Mandelson was at the smelter for a ‘nanosecond’, according to Rothschild. Nobody in Brussels – not even his chief of staff – knew about these potentially compromising aspects of the commissioner’s trip.
Rothschild told the court that the trip was purely recreational.
But Mr Justice Tugendhat found that Rothschild’s evidence ‘had not been entirely candid’ and that he had given ‘quite unrealistic answers’.
In making his judgment against Rothschild, the judge said the trip had indeed ‘foreseeably brought Lord Mandelson’s public office and personal integrity into disrepute and exposed him to accusations of conflict of interest… It gave rise to the reasonable grounds to suspect that Lord Mandelson had engaged in improper discussions with Mr Deripaska about aluminium’.
Rothschild took the case to the Court of Appeal, where he also lost. In 2013, the Supreme Court threw out Rothschild’s application to have the case heard at the highest level.
He had to pay the Daily Mail £1.5million in legal costs. The libel action attracted worldwide attention. Thanks to that publicity, we were made aware of another even earlier trip by Mandelson on a Deripaska-linked jet.
‘We were tasked to go to Brussels on November 24, 2004, to pick up Mr Mandelson,’ the member of the flight crew, who has corroborating documents, told the Daily Mail in 2011.
‘We flew empty from Farnborough to Brussels, picked him up there as the only passenger and flew him to Luton.’
After Mandelson’s ‘ratty’ behaviour, the Gulfstream took off again.
‘We flew him to Rotterdam, where he disembarked,’ said the crew member. ‘We overnighted in Rotterdam at the Hilton, I recall, and then flew out [without Mandelson] the next day.’
The crew member, who has a contemporaneous note of the trip, said the plane was owned by Deripaska but managed by an aviation company, for which the crew worked. ‘A lot of the flying we did with Deripaska seemed to be related to what Putin was doing,’ they recalled. ‘We would go somewhere and then a couple of days later Putin would arrive.’
