Revealed: Peter Mandelson’s Russian Connections and Palantir Lobbying Links

Keir Starmer approved the appointment of the disgraced peer Lord Mandelson to be the UK’s ambassador to the US, despite officials highlighting his financial links to a Russian defence technology company that produces radar and satellite communications for the country’s land-based missile early-warning system, new documents reveal

Mandelson’s appointment was “rushed” through, the documents reveal, despite a due diligence report by the Cabinet Office’s Proprietary and Ethics Team (PET) highlighting that he had served on the board of the Russian conglomerate Sistema.

The Russia connection was not the only warning put to senior figures in Number 10. The documents also raise questions about why Mandelson retained his shares in his lobbying outfit Global Counsel during his short term as Ambassador, despite officials insisting that he should divest them. 

According to the PET report, Downing Street were warned that “the retained role and interest in Global Counsel would have to cease” if Mandelson was appointed as ambassador.

However, despite resigning as Director, the peer apparently retained significant shareholdings in Global Counsel at the same time as the company organised a meeting between the Prime Minister Keir Starmer and their client, Peter Thiel’s controversial data giant Palantir, in February 2025. Mandelson did not fully divest his shares until after resigning from the role.

The same due diligence pack, dated 11 December 2024, had flagged Lord Mandelson’s continuing shareholdings in technology companies and his paid roles across finance and investment, raising fresh questions about whether No 10 knowingly accepted a web of conflicts of interest at the heart of the UK’s most commercially and strategically sensitive diplomatic post.

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Sistema and Russia’s Defence Infrastructure

The due diligence pack prepared for No 10 suggests checks on Lord Mandelson had been conducted on 4 December 2024 but warned that they “should not be considered exhaustive”.

Under “internet searches”, officials included reporting that Lord Mandelson had served as a non-executive director of Sistema, “itself the majority shareholder of RTI, a defence technology company”, and that RTI produced “radar and satellite communications for Russia’s land-based missile early warning system”.

The same entry noted that RTI’s chairman was “Yevgeny Primakov, a Putin ally and former prime minister”, and that Lord Mandelson “remained on the board until June 2017, long after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014”. Primakov, also a former foreign minister and spymaster, is known for helping shift Russian foreign policy away from the West. 

British sanctions documents later described Sistema’s owner, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, as a “prominent Russian businessman” who “is or has been involved in obtaining a benefit from or supporting the Government of Russia” through Sistema’s business interests in the Russian energy and information, communications and digital technologies sectors – sectors the UK designated as strategically significant to the Russian state. 

Yevtushenkov ceded control of Sistema in April 2022 after Britain sanctioned him following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The London Stock Exchange also suspended trading in Sistema’s depositary receipts in March 2022 as Western sanctions escalated.

Public records from the House of Lords show Lord Mandelson declared both a directorship in Sistema and later a shareholding in the company, even after his board role ended. The Lords register from 2016 lists him as a “Non-executive Director, Sistema (diversified holding company)”. 

A later register still records “Sistema (diversified holding company)” under shareholdings, with the interest marked as ceased only on 24 June 2021. Lord Mandelson’s formal financial relationship with Sistema appears to have outlasted his directorship by several years.

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Global Counsel and Palantir 

The same due diligence note records that Lord Mandelson remained “President and Chairman of International Advisory Board” at Global Counsel and continued to have “significant control” over the firm even after resigning his directorship in May 2024. 

It lists Global Counsel’s clients as including TikTok, Shell, Accenture, the Premier League, JPMorgan, Santander, BP, Sizewell C and Shein, and warns that “reputational risks could occur relating to any of these clients’ dealings with the UK or USA government”.

The note adds that a 20% share in Global Counsel had been sold to the Messina Group in April 2024, valuing the firm at £30 million. Among Messina’s clients, highlighted in the due diligence document: Uber, Google, Airbnb and Amazon – all companies which had donated, or the founders of which had donated, millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and inauguration.

But the most controversial of Global Counsel’s clients during Lord Mandelson’s ambassadorship was Palantir Technologies, the US defence analytics firm founded by billionaire Peter Thiel.

As Byline Times previously revealed, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a business partner of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, privately described Thiel and Epstein as “co-owners” of a Valar Ventures fund.

The Epstein-Thiel business relationship is documented from 2014, when Thiel personally solicited Epstein to invest in Valar Ventures, through to 2019, months before Epstein’s final arrest. 

During this period, Epstein’s connections to Russian intelligence were extensive. He maintained documented contact with Sergey Belyakov, an FSB-trained operative who managed the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s premier platform for cultivating Western business elites. Epstein had also introduced Thiel to Belyakov, whom he met in person in 2016.

Christopher Steele, former head of MI6’s Russia desk, assessed that Epstein’s fortune likely originated from the former Soviet Union and Russian organised crime, and that he was developing compromising material on Western officials on behalf of Russian intelligence services.

In his letter of resignation to his staff at the British Embassy, Mandelson claimed that “I continue to feel utterly awful about my association with Epstein twenty years ago and the plight of his victims.”

But the recent US Department of Justice disclosures reveal Mandelson was in regular contact with Epstein up till nine years previously, meeting him in Paris in 2014, and praising Donald Trump as a “phenomenal” politician in 2016: “his craft and tenacity are amazing”.

Mandelson introduced Epstein to one of Vladimir Putin’s favoured oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska, and even after Russia’s invasion of East Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Labour Peer was planning to attend Belyakov’s SPIEF event.

As of late 2025, Palantir Technologies entered a major strategic partnership with the UK Government, pledging to invest up to £1.5 billion into the UK to advance its position as a defence technology and AI leader.

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Failure to Divest

Government officials stated plainly in the due diligence pack that “the retained role and interest in Global Counsel would have to cease if appointed HMA” – His Majesty’s Ambassador. Lord Mandelson did not comply. He continued to retain his 21% shareholding in Global Counsel until February 2026, when revelations of the depth of his relationship with Epstein came to light.

Throughout this period, Global Counsel continued to represent Palantir – a company which holds at least £670 million in UK Government contracts spanning nuclear weapons systems, NHS patient data and police intelligence databases.

When the Government appointed Lord Mandelson, it ignored the internal advice requiring him to divest from a lobbying firm actively facilitating the entry of an Epstein business associate’s company into the British national security apparatus.

Byline Times approached the UK Government for comment.