Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey has said he is “appalled” by claims about former Business Secretary Lord Mandelson and his links with Jeffrey Epstein.
At a news conference Thursday, Bailey was asked about emails Mandelson allegedly sent to Epstein during the financial crisis.
At the time, Mandelson was Business Secretary and the global banking industry was near collapse, leading to massive government bailouts in many countries, including Britain. There was a lot of anger about this and the then Labor government proposed imposing a tax on bankers’ bonuses.
As the BBC’s economics editor, Faisal Islam, writes, the latest emails show that Mandelson suggested that Jamie Dimon, the boss of JPMorgan, one of America’s biggest banks, should make a mild threat to the then chancellor, the late Alistair Darling, over taxes.
“There are times when things start happening, lobbying, with obvious ethics attached to them that I find shocking,” said Bailey, who played a key role in helping stabilize the UK banking sector during the 2008–09 financial crisis.
Bailey said, “To see those pictures of Peter Mandelson with Alistair Darling… Alistair Darling was doing all the right things and he was doing them with complete honesty and decency.”
“And he can’t say anything about himself today.”
