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The Rest Is Money
251. The man who rumbled Mandelson: Dan Neidle's Epstein files investigation
00:46:52
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- [00:00]
A
Mandelson getting gifts from Epstein for his partner. In America, gifts are taxable. So a standard thing you do, which Epstein was doing, was saying, no, I'm not making a gift to Mandelson's partner. I'm making a loan. And they all know it's a gift. We're publishing probably before this goes live, a mini Mandelson search engine that lets you search the Mandelson emails and the Epstein files very quickly and efficiently. And it contains a bar chart showing you how many emails there were per month. Peaks, the high point of the financial crisis.
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B
How many?
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A
Roughly 200amonth, I think.
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B
Wow. Quite a lot.
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A
Mandelson is discussing with Epstein and clearly Epstein is liaising with JP Morgan. So essentially, Mandelson is acting as a lobbyist and advisor. And then I found these emails which had been leaked by Mandelson to Epstein.
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C
This episode is brought to you by Octopus Energy. Now, you know we love talking to entrepreneurs on this show. So with us is the founder of Octopus Energy, Greg Jack. Right, I'm going to start with this. If you could change one thing to help Britain's economy grow, what would it be?
- [01:05]
A
I'd love to see pension funds putting more money into British businesses. Over the last 25 years, they've fallen from 40% of their investments going to British businesses to 4%. That's bad for business here. It's bad for our stock market, but it's also bad for pensioners. In fact, a Canadian pensioner will get almost double the pension from the same amount invested as a British pensioner. We need to sort that.
- [01:28]
C
Nice one, Greg. Well, thanks to Octopus Energy for powering this episode of the Best Is Money.
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A
Disney plus wants to know, are you
- [01:36]
B
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A
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B
I said Thunderbolts, the New Avengers is
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A
now streaming on Disney plus.
- [01:54]
B
Meet the new Avengers.
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A
That's cool.
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B
Marvel Studios Thunderbolts, the New Avengers, rated
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A
PG 13, now streaming on. You guessed it, Disney.
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B
Hello and welcome to the Rest Is Money with me, Robert Peston.
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C
And me, Steph McGovern. And also with us is Dan Needle, who you will know is one of our podcast friends, often comes on here to talk about tax stuff, avoidance, evasion and all of that. For a long time he was a tax lawyer. Now he runs Tax Policy Associates. But more importantly, today he has an incredible story to tell about how he has been uncovering some of the biggest scandal in the Mandelson Epstein relationship. It involves his own whatsapps he's had with Mandelson on all of this. But it's an incredible story you do not want to miss.
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B
That's certainly true. I do regard him as the main whistleblower. So let's just get straight into this absolutely shocking story.
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C
Here's our interview with Dan Needle. You were calling yourself a podcast parasite when you walked in, which I don't believe.
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A
I don't go on my own podcast just because I'm lazy. I turn up other people, so they spend all the time money building an audience, having amazing facilities, being really good at it, and I just sponge off them.
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C
Excellent. Well, we love it when you come and sponge off us, because that is definitely what you're here to do today. We're going to jump straight in because you have been very heavily involved in assessing the Epstein files, haven't you? You've. And it's come about in a funny way, because we know you as a tax expert, so someone who's righting the wrongs of what's going on when it comes to tax evasion and avoidance and things like that. And that's how this started for you, isn't it?
- [03:41]
A
It's totally fucking random. During that initial stuff about Mandelson getting gifts from Epstein for his partner, someone tagged me on this saying, oh, shouldn't Epstein have paid tax on this? And I said, no, of course not. There's no UK tax on a gift. But then I saw that the way the loans were being made, Epstein told Mandelson to make them a loan for US G tax purposes. And I suddenly got excited. This was US gift tax avoidance, maybe even criminal in the States, and Mandelson might be criminally liable as an accessory to that.
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B
I'm sorry, I should have laughed, but this is. I love this level of detail. It's just wonderful.
- [04:20]
A
Detail is, sadly, all I do. It's all I've got. And so I then spent a merry six hours speaking to US tax experts, academics, lawyers. And consensus was, in theory, yes, but everybody does it in America, so chill. So that was like a blind alley. Here you have inheritance tax, if broadly you die with £325,000 of assets. Huge simplification. That's not advice. In America, the threshold's much bigger, 10 million. But here you can give away as many gifts as you like as long as you live seven years afterwards. In America, gifts are taxable, so a standard thing you do, which Epstein was doing, was Saying, no, I'm not making a gift. You, to Mandelson's partner, I'm making a loan. And they all know it's a gift, but they have a fake document, pretend it's a loan. And that, in theory, is somewhere between very naughty and criminal. But it's so commonly done, no one gets prosecuted.
- [05:15]
C
Right, okay. So you looked into that.
- [05:17]
A
So I thought, well, maybe I can find some more. And I did some more. And I discovered this really bizarre thing that in 2011, Mandelson looked like he was buying an apartment in Rio for £2 million through a company in Paris, Panama. I'm not vastly naive about this. I worked as a tax lawyer for 25 years. I'm used to seeing Caymans, Bermuda Jersey, all kinds of legitimate structures. Panama, though, if you're a shipping company, good reason to use Panama. If you're someone else using Panama, step back, walk away slowly looking in the other direction. So deeply suspicious. Everyone's. Everyone listening to this. Their immediate instinct about Panama is going to be the same as mine. So I thought that was interesting. So I spent ages and got away to contact Manderson.
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B
Right, so you. So you contacted Peter Mandelson.
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A
I contacted him on WhatsApp. On WhatsApp. And I said to him, yada yada. We found this saying, you plan to buy a flat in Brazil using an aggressive and artificial tax avoidance scheme using a Panama company. You sought advice from Epstein. And I didn't mention this. You described him as your chief life advisor. And I said, can you comment specifically on whether the arrangement was fully disclosed to HMRC and the Brazilian authorities? People doing these kind of structures tend not to fully disclose them. He wrote, saying, I'm making no comment, but for your information, I have no recollection of this proposal or knowledge as to the authenticity of this document. We've never owned property in Brazil. We've no association with any company in Panama and hold no funds offshore. So I went ahead and published. And then what are the great things about the Internet and about what we do is we can publish something and then someone I've never heard of will get in touch with this nugget. And after we published, someone, actually, someone who I have corresponded before, but I hadn't spoken to about this, got in touch with. Oh, yeah, you might be interested in this. A Brazilian company Mandelson had set up at this date with his name and his partner's name on it.
- [07:16]
B
So what did he say about the fact that there is this Brazilian company
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C
and he hadn't blocked you by this
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A
point, not by this point. So I said, dear Lord, Madison, you said you never owned property in Brazil, but you and your partner were shareholders in yadda yadda Yadda, formed in May 2011 to hold Brazilian property. Right.
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B
Do we know if there was any Brazilian property in this?
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A
At the moment? We do not. Someone who knows a lot more than me and my contacts about Brazilian property registers could dig into this. I think it's the kind of thing that journalists would be all over if this wasn't the 720th most important thing. Yes, yes, at the moment. And he replied, I've never owned property in Brazil and never will, and I can see a dodge. So I said, but you owned a company in Brazil that owned property in Brazil. And he said, no, very clearly. And I then said, did you declare the company to hmrc? Why were you a shareholder at a company incorporated to hold Brazilian real estate? And at that point, blah, silence.
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B
We should probably point out that Peter Mandelson has said that he doesn't believe that he's broken the law, that he's done anything criminal.
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A
This is all quite fun. And I thought I'd do a bit more digging.
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B
Right.
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A
Did that more digging and then found this email where Mandelson advises JP Morgan to threaten the Chancellor.
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B
Yeah. Which is, you know, one of the. The many jaw dropping. It's jaw dropping that you uncovered. So talk us through. It's not because, you know, Steph and I are now steeped in this, but some people listening won't understand precisely what was going on and why this is so shocking.
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A
So perhaps the reason no one else had reported this is that in isolation, the email doesn't make clear what's going on. But I have the advantage of being old and sad. So I was kind of there in 2009 talking to banks about what was happening. Happening at the time. What was happening was that people were fucking furious about the financial crisis. And if the government had presented the Burn the Bankers at the Stake act, then probably it would have gone through. They didn't do that.
- [09:14]
B
I mean, you remember there were people camping outside some Paul's at the time in protest against, you know, the Occupy movement. This was, you know, I think people probably don't remember quite how almost every person in the country.
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A
Yeah.
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C
Hit bankers.
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A
They did, because 2008, the banks failed and you're. That. That didn't have an immediate effect on most people, but then the government bailed them out, making the government's finances go up the Swanee. And then the banks on life support basically. Stopped lending and so business suddenly couldn't do business, the credit. So to turn around, to blame the banks for this is a slight simplification of complex macroeconomic factors. But it's kind of not wrong.
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B
Well, it's not wrong in the sense, very simply, you know, taxpayers always bail out banks because they play such a crucial role in the economy. Therefore, you know, they are, to an extent, completely dependent on all of us. And they were taking these appalling risks to enrich themselves effectively using our credit, our money as taxpayers.
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C
And.
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B
And that's why it was perfectly reasonable for everybody to be furious with.
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A
Yeah.
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C
And then. But it was presented to, like, the lay person, because we were both covering this at the time. I was your producer back then. We were, you know, it was presented as this needed to be done to stop the whole economy falling apart and losing their jobs and everyone losing their houses and businesses and everything else, which.
- [10:33]
A
Which is true, but doesn't make people feel better.
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C
No.
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A
And the shareholders of the banks, broadly speaking, did lose out, but the highly paid employees at the bank, the executives, did not. They were still.
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B
Their bonuses.
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A
They kept and were still getting bonuses. And so the government here decided they would have a tax on bank bonuses. And I thought at the time, and think now, it was a really stupid tax, because what it said is, any bonus you pay in the next seven months, there's going to be a 50% additional tax on it. So, surprise, surprise, what do they do? They accelerate some bonuses, they defer others.
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B
Yeah, I remember at the time, it was literally, the whole thing was so depressing and so shocking.
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A
Yeah, it was all depressing and shocking. But behind the scenes, obviously, the banks weren't very happy with this. There were emails where Mandelson is discussing with Epstein, Mandelson trying to persuade the Chancellor not to do this. And clearly Epstein is liaising with JP Morgan. So essentially, Mandelson is acting as a lobbyist and advisor to. To this guy who I think we can probably legally, safely describe as very corrupt. JP Morgan called Jess Staley.
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B
I wish to remind people he then subsequently became Chief Executive of Barclays and was forced out of Barclays because the Board and indeed the Financial Conduct Authority ruled that he had not been full and frank in terms of his relationship
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A
with Jeffrey Epstein, which is an understatement. There was this discussion about lobbying and that looked improper. But then there is an email from Epstein to Mandelson saying, should Jamie Dimon call Darling, Alastair Darling, UK Chancellor, should he call him again? And Mandelson said, yes.
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C
And Mildly threaten to bully the Chancellor, essentially.
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A
And it looks like Epstein's a bit shocked by this because Epstein actually responds, saying, should we instead know something about some apprenticeship funds or something you could dangle in front of the chance? That obviously wasn't going to do anything. But this was passed on to JP Morgan. And indeed, Jamie Dimon did threaten the Chancellor. We know that because in Alistair Darling's autobiography, he talks about having a call from Jamie Dimon. And it's a pretty fun bit to read because diamond says, if you do this, we may sell our holdings of UK government bonds, which is an extraordinary.
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B
I mean, that's such an extraordinary thing for a bank to say.
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A
Yeah.
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B
I mean, we're basically saying, we will do our best to bankrupt the UK by dumping our holdings of UK government debt. I mean, absolutely astonishing.
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A
Darling was. He was never the world's most charismatic politician, but he was very decent.
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B
He was thoroughly decent. I knew him right. Very well. I mean, you know, so, so. But I. So, so tell us what then transpires.
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A
Darling responds to that by saying, but you don't hold these guilts to us a favor. You hold them because it gets you a return.
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C
Yes, good point.
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A
And then Dimon says, well, we may not proceed with our plan to build a headquarters in the uk. And Duragan says, but, you know, you've already signed a lease, so it's not the world's most impressive threat in the end. Lots of other bankers try to threaten, but looking at this, I was stunned that a member of the British Cabinet had advised a foreign bank to threaten the British government.
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B
They're supposed to be the same team. This is like, you know, if you're in a. You know, if you're in. It's like if you're playing for my favourite team, you know, Arsenal, and you advise, you know, one of the opposing team's, you know, defenders to break the leg of one of your colleagues. It's unreal. It appears so disloyal.
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C
And on top of that, yes, it's against a colleague. It's also against the country, of the interests of the uk, of the interests of everyone who's suffering because of the consequences of the credit crunch.
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A
It is. I've spoken to people who were sort of in government circles at the time, and they regard this as essentially traitorous.
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C
Yes, exactly.
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A
In fact, some of them asked me if it was, in fact treason, and it isn't. To commit treason, you basically have to sleep with the King's daughters or murder the Lord High Chamber.
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C
There's chances of that in all of this as well.
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B
I was gonna say, is there any of that in the Epstein files? As you've, you've literally been living and breathing every one of them.
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A
There is just so much, I can't say a definite no, but doesn't look like it.
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B
You've got, you know, you've got your hackles up at this point you're totally immersed in them.
- [14:48]
A
Well, I'm not. This is kind of by accident. So my wife had just gone out with our youngest son to a soft play. I'd then stumbled across this. I call Jim Pickard at the ft. My wife then comes back. By the time she's come back it's gone from not having found it to on the front page of the ft. So Jim Pickard and the FT are clearly some kind of geniuses at moving things fast. Yeah, so that was on the ft. Then I kept looking to see what else there was on this and then I found these emails which had been leaked by Mandelson to Epstein and they were. He wasn't leaking everything. It was highly selective. A few emails of the most really sensitive material at the height of the financial crisis. How are banks going to be regulated?
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B
So these are the, these are the Shriti Vadira. Yeah, this is her note about essentially the health of the banking and how
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A
it can be improved.
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B
Yeah, so that was one of them and the other one was the Nick Butler assessment of essentially, you know, what was happening to the deficit, whether taxes would have to go up, ways round all that.
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A
So the Shriti Vadairidote is about how you can get the financial system moving again, how you can get banks lending to small business and she's looking at ways of freeing up financial markets and
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B
we should just remind people that. So Sridhi Vadira becomes a special advisor to Gordon Brown really back in the late 90s at this stage she is a middle ranking minister in terms of her title but she is one of the more influential members of the government because she is so close to Gordon Brown and she's actually one of the other things which is sort of extraordinary about this is she is actually number two to Peter Madison within the Department of Business. She is writing this confidential note essentially about the health of the banking system with some policy recommendations about what the government should then do, which he is she. Which he her boss, despite the fact is plainly Confidential is sending onto Epstein.
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A
Yeah, and I mean her titles understates what she was because she was really Gordon Brown's most influential advisor on the financial crisis, which I think pretty much everyone would agree he did a very successful job.
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B
So talk us through precisely what was in that note and what then happens to that note.
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A
The note discusses some sort of fairly technical ways of freeing up the financial markets, but that is going to be of interest to people who are players in the financial markets, I think, fairly obviously. And Madison just flicks it across to Epstein. There's no comment or indication of what happened next.
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C
The interesting thing about it as well is the speed at which he forwards on this information too, because it's not like he sits and thinks about it and goes, right, shall I send it to him? Is this a good idea or not? It's literally seconds after receiving it.
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A
I can't remember if this one is a few minutes or four seconds, but one of these two emails that we're going to discuss was four seconds. So there's a question as to how he did that. And it looks a lot like some idiot gave him a device or let him have a device which had both government and personal emails on it.
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B
So that was the interesting question for me, which I hope this isn't too much of a digression.
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A
All we do is digression.
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B
But before we get on to the Nick Butler one, which is also, I think, incredibly important and just astonishing in terms of the fact that it was forwarded to Epstein, do you understand how much did you Mandelson cover his tracks in terms of how this stuff was forwarded? Can you see whether this is forwarded from his personal email and therefore how it gets from being a government document into his personal emails?
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A
So these documents are redacted. They've been clearly the documents which Trump and co care about are hand redacted. These they couldn't care less about. So it's all automatically redacted. I think what they're trying to do is redact every name that isn't Epstein, but they're really bad at it. So you end up with some emails with Mandelson and his email address that have just reacted throughout somewhere his name is redacted but his email address is visible and so forth. But it looks very much like all of them are coming from a personal BT Internet account.
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B
And does that explain? Because one of the things, the sort of subsequent shocking things that has happened is that when Mandelson was vetted for the job of ambassador to the US at the end of 2024, none of the vetting uncovered apparently any of this rogue behavior. And so the question is, is just vetting in general in this country? Absolutely. Diabolical or was he being very clever in the way that he was disguising how he was forwarding this stuff on?
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A
Indications are that he's not hugely tech literate. So. Or wasn't then.
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B
So that would imply.
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A
Just.
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B
Sorry, just a bit is absolutely explicit that actually this country is unbelievably rubbish at vetting the conduct of people who were being appointed to. I mean, in this case, probably the second or third most important job within the government.
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A
I think they made a bad mistake. So they asked and Gordon Brown asked in September, were there emails from Mandelson to Epstein? And they looked and they saw there were no emails from the official to Epstein. No one noticed or remembered that he had a device that had business emails and personal emails on it.
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B
A handheld device, maybe a BlackBerry, maybe an iPhone.
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A
A BlackBerry for sure.
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B
So it'd be a BlackBerry at those days. And broadly, if you've got your business email and your personal email on there, it's pretty easy to forward an email using your personal account. And for whatever reason, MI5 weren't bright enough to work this out.
- [20:36]
A
We think it was a personal BlackBerry because we know it's a BlackBerry because there's an auto signature, but he didn't change the thing. It says, send me a BlackBerry. And we think it's personal because you can see in some of the emails, the internal time zone on his BlackBerry is set to British time, but not summertime. So during the summer, all the official emails automatically are on summer emails. But here's his.
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C
So just to understand this, then, if you are a government official, you can argue. Or are you not allowed to have a personal device that has your personal email on, but also government things on?
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B
I think now that. I think now that restriction is in place, but amazingly it doesn't appear to have been back there.
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C
No one would have thought to look at a person to see whether a government official also has a personal email address. Because doesn't everyone. Doesn't everyone have a work email and a personal one?
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A
Yes, but if, if they were on separate devices, then it would have been. There would have been trace of him moving it from one to the other.
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C
Perhaps you think that would make it easier if it's on the same.
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B
There'll still be a trace on his personal device. If the question is why they would allow a business email to be set up on a personal device. Exactly.
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A
We have the Epstein emails in the end because Epstein was really methodical about keeping backup. We see lots of things going back 20 years. Of course, we don't know how complete this is. There could be a whole bunch of stuff that we're not seeing.
- [21:53]
C
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- [24:04]
B
Because anyway, let's go back to the butler one. So the butler one, you know, it includes, you know, this extraordinary line that, you know, you know, we can flog, you know, 20 billion of government assets to get, you know, you know, essentially debt down and that give the appearance of borrowing is not as big as. And that's that kind of stuff because I remember, you know, I was immersed in, as you know, we both were covering the financial crisis. There was so much volatility in bond prices, for example, and in the markets at the time, that sort of bit of information would have been price sensitive.
- [24:39]
A
Well, and you can see that. So that information is in the middle of the email. And very soon after Madison sends the email without mentioning any specifics in it, he just forwards it. Epstein comes back and says, what does saleable assets mean? He's picked up on that and Maldives, and very helpfully makes a suggestion that it means property and real estate, which I think is probably wrong, but shows that Mandelson really should have realized or did realize that this was of commercial interest to Epstein.
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B
And can I just ask, because there was a. This is the original email leaks back in September of last year related to the sale of a very specific business by Royal bank of.
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A
This is Sempra.
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B
Yeah, this is. Yeah, this is the business. This was the leak that got Gordon Brown initially very exercised, former Prime Minister, former Chancellor. And this was the leak where he asked the Cabinet Secretary to investigate essentially how serious a breach of rules this was and where the Cabinet Secretary broadly came back and said, nothing to see here.
- [25:47]
A
Because it seems that they did the. They answered the question. They were asked, were there emails from Mandelson to Epstein they didn't think, were there other ways he could have leaked? We actually still don't really know what happened with Sempra. There's clear discussions between Mandelson and Epstein and Epstein and Staley about JP Morgan's bid for Sempra.
- [26:09]
B
So just to remind people what we've said, oh, my goodness. Epstein is getting information he shouldn't be getting from Mandelson. Epstein is very close to senior executives at JP Morgan. Royal bank of Scotland is selling commodities business called Sempra. And then tell us who ends up owning Sempra.
- [26:27]
A
JP Morgan buy it. And at one point, Epstein asked Staley if Mandelson has been helpful. And Staley says, Staley's at J.P. morgan as well. Staley is senior at J.P. morgan. We don't know from these emails what Mandelson did, if anything, to help that sale, but he seems to have done something. So that is one of the many gaps we have here.
- [26:48]
C
And then what is it that Mandelson's getting out of all of this, apart from luxury holidays?
- [26:55]
A
So some people say, ah, it's the $10,000 gift to his partner or the loan. Loan, yeah, I apologize deeply. Loan, fully commercial loan, or it's the mysterious $75,000 that were wired to Mandelson in 2003 and 2004, which we still don't know why they were there's. No emails about that. I think that's dead wrong. When Mandelson says it's daft to think I'd be swayed by such trifling amounts of money, he's right. But towards the end of the government, Mandelson starts being even more interested in JP Morgan. Not to help them out, but trying to get close to them. And within two days of the government falling, you can see in the emails Epstein talking to people trying to find a job for Mandelson. And he succeeds because a couple of months later there is an offer from Deutsche bank of 2 to 5 million dollars a year, which Mandelson turns down because he thinks it's not enough because
- [27:52]
C
of everything he's given Epstein over the years.
- [27:54]
A
Mandelson ends up taking a job with a different bank, Lazard, but only one day a week. We don't know how much he earns, but I'm guessing quite a bit. And setting up Global Council, which lets him do this on a larger, more industrial scale. So why did Mandelson do it? There's several possibilities. I think one is simply that it was a corrupt relationship and he got really close to Epstein. If you look at the emails, I've got good friends, I don't know anyone that I am as close to as Mandelson was with Epstein.
- [28:23]
B
Now, the language is. The language of the relationship between Mandelson and Epstein is remarkable. You know, there's on one occasion he says, I think something along the lines of, what is it? Nobody matters more to me.
- [28:38]
A
Nobody knows me as well as you do.
- [28:41]
B
And then Epstein says, don't worry, I won't. Don't worry, I'm never gonna do that.
- [28:44]
A
So Mandelson opens up about his relationship, difficulties about money, about politics, about business. What does Epstein open up and return to him? Nothing.
- [28:55]
B
So almost my favorite bit, though is I think it's in 2012. It's sort of adolescent because Epstein says, you've never done anything for me. You're always asking.
- [29:06]
A
That's at the end. Yes. Yeah, that's kind of towards the end. You can see we're publishing, probably before this goes live, a mini Mandelson search engine that lets you search the Mandelson emails on the Epstein files very quickly and efficiently. And it contains a bar chart showing you how many emails there were per month. And it starts off as nothing. It goes kind of peaks the high point of the financial crisis and then it kind of drops down how many
- [29:29]
B
roughly at the high point of the financial crisis?
- [29:31]
A
You're putting me on the spot about 200amonth, I think.
- [29:33]
B
Wow.
- [29:34]
A
So. So it's, it's a lot. You should check how many emails you send your spouse per month.
- [29:40]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [29:41]
B
But I think it is just, sorry, important to make this slightly more explicit. Again, there is overwhelming evidence you're saying that so the government collapses in 2010. And again, there's unbelievably shocking emails about the way that Peter Mandelson is turning against Gordon Brown and is talking to Epstein about how he's got to get Gordon Brown out. I mean, all of this in terms of betrayal of people you're supposed to be, you know, loyal to, supposed to be friends with, supposed to be part of the same team. It is. All of that stuff is unbelievably shocking. I mean, literally shocking.
- [30:28]
A
And, and it's also linked to Mandelson's search for a job because soon after the election. I'm going to read this to make sure I get it exactly right. Soon after the election, Gordon Brown's still Prime Minister. There's all the discussions about whether a coalition could be formed and Staley, Jeff Staley at JPM tells Mandelson that supporting Brown would be bad form commercially, which I take to mean will be bad for your future job prospects.
- [30:52]
B
It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. But just to be clear, from that point on, Mandelson is asking Epstein for advice for help in getting a very highly paid banking job.
- [31:05]
A
Oh, no, he doesn't ask, he just gets it. Epstein is throughout. Then Epstein is finding jobs of him, mentoring him. There's one where Mandelson writes on his own to get a job. He writes to God. I can't remember who it is. It's a really crap letter. It's like a poor quality undergraduate. Epstein is much better at this.
- [31:21]
C
What about when Epstein is trying to get these jobs for Mandelson? What is he saying to them? How is he pitching Mandelson?
- [31:29]
A
We don't see that. You see.
- [31:30]
B
So you don't see the other side of the transaction.
- [31:32]
A
We see, for example, a discussion between Staley and Epstein suggesting that they should speak to Deutsche bank about Mandelson. But we don't see most of the other stuff that's happening. We don't see how the.
- [31:49]
B
So just to be clear, because he does end up getting what for most people would be a pretty highly paid job offer from Deutsche Bank. So Jez Staley does suggest that, that this is a job that Mandelson could have.
- [32:05]
A
Two days after the government falls, Epstein writes to Staley saying, let's Talk tomorrow about PT and Deutsche Bank. Next month Deutsche bank makes an offer to Mendelssohn.
- [32:15]
C
You know, I know we're joking about elements of it because it is staggering. No, but I mean as in, you know, it's quite staggering, isn't it?
- [32:22]
A
The only way to deal with it is to. Is to joke.
- [32:24]
C
Yeah.
- [32:24]
A
Also we're not talking about all the sexual violence on the other side, partly because I can't deal with that.
- [32:29]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. And obviously given what we talk about on this podcast, we're focusing on the business and money side of it.
- [32:34]
B
It's awful.
- [32:35]
C
It is, it is. Can I just ask you as well, because one of the other things you've done in all of this is you've created your own way of searching the Epstein files, haven't you? So this. So tell us about that. Because. So rather than the kind of basic keyword search that a lot of people are doing, you've created a way of taking this to the next level.
- [32:53]
A
So the Department of Justice have all the documents up and you can search. The search is rubbish. You can only search for individual terms and it's very slow, it's a pain. So we found a way to create our own server with the documents on that start to search much more.
- [33:09]
B
And were you able to upload every document to your server?
- [33:12]
A
So there's various enterprising hackers have done that and made them available on the Internet. I don't know if you're familiar with torrents, the way that movies are pirated on the Internet, which is a great way of sharing large amounts of documents.
- [33:26]
B
So it's not all of this stuff has been uploaded.
- [33:29]
A
It's uploaded. It's just a matter of downloading it. And you know, 1.3 million documents sounds a lot, but on a modern computer it's actually nothing. And then a little bit of you don't even need coding. A little bit of tech knowledge, you can set up a search engine for that which is very efficient. I'd love to make it public, but we can't because it would cost too much.
- [33:47]
C
Right.
- [33:48]
A
And then that wasn't quite searching individually. You kind of feel you've found everything you could, you need something else. So we built an AI search on top of that where the computer runs away and does a bunch of search.
- [34:00]
C
So that means when you, rather than just searching Mandelson's name, for example, you can say things like identify all the instances of market sensitive information being shared.
- [34:09]
A
Yeah. And do give me a timeline and summary. And you need to be very careful to then check what it does because it's prone to making shit up when it feels like it.
- [34:16]
C
Yeah.
- [34:17]
B
But it gives, I think in its answers. It will Give all the URLs for all relevant documents.
- [34:21]
A
It will link, give me the documents so I can just click on them and see them. It's like having to verify everything. Yeah. It's like having an incredibly brilliant team of research assistants who are also pathological liars.
- [34:30]
B
Now, we haven't talked about Prince Andrew. Have you looked at Prince Andrew at all? Or is that just stuff you, you sort of outside of your.
- [34:40]
A
So I, I, I shouldn't really be doing this at all because I'm a tax law and I've been drawn to this by accident. Sorry, I, I was going to stop when I, when I found the, those emails. I thought I'm just going to publish them. Then I'd interview with Times Radio the next morning when I would, Sorry, this is digression again. So I was going to mention my interview with Times Radio and just see if anyone was interested. And Times Radio, because they're, because they're legit journalists, wrote to Manderson to, to get comment and he, he said to them, I have no idea what he's talking about me. And he is a fairly unreliable individual. But up to you. Over and out.
- [35:18]
B
Among the many unwise things that Peter Maslow said, I think describing you is an unreliable intervention.
- [35:26]
A
My friends are split on whether that's accurate or not. So after that I thought, right, I'm done. But kind of working sideways. Yeah. Something really bugs me is the enablers, all the people who helped out Epstein and that varies from the people who led the girls into the massages, which I'm going to stay clear of because I can't deal with it. And the lawyers who covered for him and I started looking at the lawyers who covered him and this may or may not be arrest his money, exclusive or not, depending on how the timing works out. So there's this bizarre exchange where the Fergie has got herself into massive debt and in particular she owes money to a former employee, Johnny. And Epstein offers to sort that out. But there's a price and how much debt you see the amounts involved are by the standards of these people, not large. It's about $120,000. Okay. For her it was a lot of money for Epstein.
- [36:32]
B
And how do we know where this debt came from?
- [36:36]
A
I'm not sure we do. I think he must have just lent her money, but I, I don't Know. Know. I don't know.
- [36:41]
C
We don't know who that person is.
- [36:43]
A
We know exactly who he is. This bit's kind of been reported. It's what happens next that hasn't. All right, so.
- [36:47]
B
And Johnny is. So who is Johnny, exactly?
- [36:49]
A
He'd been her.
- [36:51]
B
Her employee, but he lends her money, despite the fact that he.
- [36:56]
A
Yes, yes.
- [36:57]
C
And she.
- [36:58]
A
This has been reported. It's all very weird. I. I don't quite know what was going on, other than. Other than she's clearly really bad with money. Right. So that the press had caught on that she had a relationship with Epstein and she put out a statement where she distanced herself completely from Epstein, which makes Epstein furious. And Epstein wants to take legal action against the Telegraph.
- [37:16]
B
And do we know what year this is, roughly?
- [37:18]
A
I mean, this isn't 2011. This is Roundabout October, November 2011. So the Telegraph publishes an article. The Duchess says, this man's horrible. Nothing to do with me. Epstein's furious. Epstein wants to take legal action against the Telegraph, but the Duchess's statement is a problem for him. Yeah. So his people make clear that Epstein is only going to resolve the Duchess's money troubles if she comes out with a letter in this form. And there's then negotiations between Epstein's British lawyer and a chap called Paul Tweed.
- [37:51]
B
And which firm does he work for?
- [37:54]
A
He worked for a different firm then. Then it was a firm called Johnson. Now he has his own firm. It's like a boutique libel firm.
- [38:03]
C
So can I just ask something? Is Fergie wanting money after she's already put out the statement saying she's not connected to Epstein?
- [38:10]
A
I think she'd been in money trouble for a while and I think the offer from Epstein to resolve it had been out there for a while. But at this point, Epstein makes clear that she's only getting the help if she provides a letter.
- [38:22]
C
And she still wants the help at this point.
- [38:25]
A
At no point do they say, we're not having anything from you. You're a disreputable individual that's not even touched in this correspondence. Her PR people essentially negotiate over the form of the letter. And she's clearly very reluctant to provide this letter, and to me it is improbable.
- [38:41]
C
But she still wants the money.
- [38:42]
A
Yeah, she still wants the money. It's just about the letter and control over the letter. So this is the letter that Epstein wants her to say. Dear Geoffrey, I wanted you to know with certainty that many things said in the press about you that were attributed to me were either a Total malicious fabrication or an outrageous exaggeration. Spoiler, they weren't. She said it. I'm aware that many years ago, wasn't that long ago, you pled guilty to prostitution related charges. There was never any claim of pedophilia by the authorities, myself or anyone without thinly veiled motivations. In other words, there were claims. They're just going to gloss over them. And to me, no lawyer should be involved in sending this letter when they know they have absolutely been claimed.
- [39:28]
B
It was just the claims. I thought that what he pled guilty was solicitation for prostitution of a minor. That. That I thought was the.
- [39:35]
A
Was.
- [39:35]
B
Was literally what he pled guilty to. So this is.
- [39:38]
A
Yes, but the. The lawyer sends a letter to the Telegraph which says, well, in medical terms, that's not pedophilia because they. Because they weren't prepubescent.
- [39:49]
B
So even though it was a minor, he is claiming in this letter to
- [39:53]
A
the Telegraph, in this really poor quality letter to the Telegraph, which. Which I'm pretty sure had zero effect, but actually that is just the top of it because that was what was prosecuted in the amazingly scandalous sweetheart deal he got in Florida. There were lots of other allegations and in fact, a court in New York, if you're a sex offender and you move to New York, there's a special procedure where a court makes a decision as to how dangerous you are and puts restrictions on you and the court, the New York court accepted a bunch of other allegations. So it wasn't just that. And the lawyers should have known that. And the whole thing is shocking. And I'm gonna write about this.
- [40:26]
B
You are gonna.
- [40:27]
A
I asked the lawyer for comment. He didn't reply.
- [40:29]
B
And then what? So what is the end of all of this? Does she write the letter?
- [40:34]
A
That. That is not entirely clear.
- [40:35]
B
So we don't know. So do we know what happened to the debt? Do we? I mean, do we. It's the end of the story. We don't.
- [40:41]
A
Sadly, with a lot of this, you're seeing bits and pieces here and there. You're not seeing the full. You're not seeing the full picture.
- [40:47]
B
It's unbelievable. But we do know that much later, she is still, you know, maintaining contact, isn't she?
- [40:57]
A
Yeah. It's kind of funny. He is never rude about Peter Mandelson. He refers to him in the way that you'd refer to a lackey. Not that either of you have lackeys, but he refers to him. Let's get Mandelson onto this. He says at one point, but he never says anything that suggests he doesn't respect Mandelson, but it's pretty clear he doesn't respect the Duchess or why.
- [41:20]
C
What does he say?
- [41:22]
A
I can't remember the exact word, but he clearly refers to them as money grabbing. He's. Yeah, he doesn't have respect for them and you can see why. But clearly he regards them as valuable anyway.
- [41:32]
B
Yeah, fascinating.
- [41:34]
C
There's so much more that's gonna come out of this as well, isn't there? I mean, we've only scratched the surface and I think it's just worth reminding everyone as well. It's. This would not have all come out if it wasn't for the bravery of. Of, you know, the survivors and all of this who've pushed it out there like it is thanks to them.
- [41:49]
A
And they spent years, after the Florida, just the prosecutor let him off, they spent years making a fuss about this, trying to get it on the agenda.
- [41:58]
B
Can I make sort of one general point which I don't know if you had or thought about. I mean, you've obviously, partly by reasons of accident, focused on particular individuals. So, you know, Mandelson, obviously, enormous interest in the uk. Just been talking about Sarah Ferguson. One of the things that particularly my overseas friends say to me is it is sort of disgraceful that people in America who also were close to Epstein seem to have, so far at least, sort of got away with it. So, you know, we've got the Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, yesterday, you know, giving evidence about the fact that in 2012, he has lunch with his family on Epstein's island. It absolutely contradicts what he'd earlier said, which is that he'd broken off all contact with Epstein years earlier and before it was clear that Epstein was a. Was a. Was a paedophile. And yet there don't appear to be. I mean, you know, House Representatives, some members there are angry, but there don't appear to be any consequences for Lutnick. He's still got this very powerful job within Trump's administration.
- [43:26]
C
Yeah. And even Trump's press secretaries come out and said they support as well. There's a double thing there, isn't there, of them getting the backing from Trump as to.
- [43:36]
B
And of course, it's widely believed that there are unpublished. I mean, just. I want to ask you a question. Do you believe that there is a large number of documents relating to Trump and Epstein that have been withheld?
- [43:51]
A
No idea.
- [43:52]
B
And there's no way with your search engine that you can sort of see. I was just wondering whether with really clever AI, it would be possible to sort of, in a sense see when things have been removed or, you know, patterns of removal. One thing that's pretty important to point out about the huge numbers of documents in the Epstein files is just because your name is there doesn't necessarily mean
- [44:19]
A
that you've done anything wrong that may be possible. So for example, there are emails involving Mandelson where they successfully redact his name and his email address. But Mandelson's slightly unusual in having used a BlackBerry and left the auto signature and the auto signatures on blackberries differ slightly between models. So if you search for emails which have Mandelson's exact BlackBerry auto signature but not Mandelson's name, you find some other Mandelson emails. So with Mandelson you can, can you can do that? Could you perform a similar exercise and try and find Trump related things? Maybe, but I'm desperately backpedaling trying to get out of this and do, and
- [44:57]
B
do my normal stuff.
- [44:58]
A
Yeah, I want to get back to
- [44:59]
C
the day job and we should let you do that. But Dan, thank you so much as ever for coming in to talk to us.
- [45:04]
B
Shocking and gripping.
- [45:05]
C
Yeah, really. But you know, thanks for what you've done on it as well because it's really important to get all this out there.
- [45:10]
A
Taxpolicy.org.uk where we host the documents. By the time you hear this, probably there will be a Mendelssohn search engine engine. Yes, taxpolicy. Org.
- [45:19]
B
I think you're going to be swamped. You are swamped with people trying to use it so the system doesn't crash. But as always, Dan, thank you so much for joining us.
- [45:27]
C
Thank you and bye bye from all of us.
- [45:30]
B
Goodbye.