By Olivia Davies

Copyright bbc

The travel receipts were among more than the 33,000 Epstein-related records released earlier this month by the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee, provided by the Department of Justice.

The documents show Epstein’s financial account with a New York travel agent, Shoppers Travel Inc, which was used by Epstein to book commercial flights for his associates and employees.

Victims also allege to have been flown commercially by Epstein in this way.

In emails from October 2005, reported by Bloomberg on Wednesday, Mandelson is said to have complained to Epstein about a lack of British Airways airmiles and Epstein offered to pay for his Caribbean flight.

Mandelson is reported to have told Epstein to “fight for early release” shortly before he was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

The Labour peer and former cabinet minister also told Epstein “I think the world of you”, the day before he began his sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in June 2008.

Mandelson does not deny these emails.

In a previous statement to the BBC he said: “I relied on assurances of [Epstein’s] innocence that turned out later to be horrendously false.”

In a letter Mandelson wrote to staff at the British embassy in Washington after being sacked, he said he “deeply regrets” the circumstances around his departure and continues “to feel utterly awful about my association with Epstein 20 years ago and the plight of his victims”.

Epstein was convicted in Florida for soliciting prostitution from a person under the age of 18 in 2008. He died in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.