Revealed: Mandelson vetting warned of ties to senior figures in China, Russia and Israel

Politics The Guardian By Paul Lewis, Henry Dyer and Pippa Crerar 27 May 2026 13:35 1 min read

Exclusive: Vetting officials also flagged £1m loan when recommending he should be denied security clearance Key questions: did ‘mitigations’ cover links to China and Russia? Peter Mandelson’s associations with senior figures in China, Russia and Israel were among the concerns raised by the UK’s vetting agency when it concluded he should be denied clearance, multiple sources have told the Guardian. Mandelson’s links to China’s minister of finance, Lan Fo’an, the sanctions-hit Russian oligarch O

Exclusive: Vetting officials also flagged £1m loan when recommending he should be denied security clearance

Key questions: did ‘mitigations’ cover links to China and Russia?

Peter Mandelson’s associations with senior figures in China, Russia and Israel were among the concerns raised by the UK’s vetting agency when it concluded he should be denied clearance, multiple sources have told the Guardian.

Mandelson’s links to China’s minister of finance, Lan Fo’an, the sanctions-hit Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and a former Israeli military intelligence general, Tamir Hayman, were all flagged by the agency as areas of concern shortly before he took up his post as the UK’s ambassador to the US, the sources said.

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