LONDON: An advisory firm co-founded by Peter Mandelson, who was fired as UK envoy to the United States over his links to Jeffrey Epstein, took a step nearer bankruptcy Friday after entering administration.
Global Counsel has stopped trading and appointed administrators, a process whereby a financially stricken company calls on outside expertise in a bid to salvage some assets.
“While Global Counsel had grown over the past 15 years to become one of the UK’s leading public affairs consultancies, the rapid and sudden loss of clients over recent weeks has had a monumental impact on the business,” said Will Wright, chief executive of Interpath, the administrators appointed to the company Friday.
“We will now undertake a detailed review of the company’s assets and liabilities and explore the best route to realize the company’s assets,” he added in a statement.
Several major clients, including Barclays, Tesco and English football’s Premier League, have cut ties with the firm in recent weeks, according to press reports.
“The continuing maelstrom of political and media attention surrounding Peter Mandelson has made it challenging to continue with the business in its current form,” Global Counsel posted Thursday on LinkedIn.
“To be clear, this will no longer be business as usual.”
The post added that “in the unlikely event that any ongoing servicing of clients is viable, this will be on a limited basis only.”
Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who appointed Mandelson as UK envoy to Washington, fired him from the post last September.
Mandelson faces a criminal investigation over claims he shared confidential information with Epstein nearly two decades ago.
He sold his shares in Global Counsel earlier this month, completing his exit from the firm after stepping down from its board two years ago.
Chief executive and co-founder Benjamin Wegg-Prosser also resigned this month.
“While today’s Global Counsel has no connection with Peter Mandelson, his role as a co-founder and his conduct, particularly in its early years, has indelibly colored the way Global Counsel is seen in the outside world,” the firm said.
After US courts released millions of documents related to convicted sex offender Epstein, the Financial Times reported that Mandelson and Wegg-Prosser sought Epstein’s advice on launching the company in 2010.
Documents also showed that Wegg-Prosser met Epstein while he was under house arrest in New York to present the firm’s business plan.
The scandal raised fresh questions about Starmer’s judgment after acknowledging he had appointed Mandelson as US ambassador despite knowing he had maintained links to the late Epstein.
Disgraced ex UK envoy’s firm on brink of collapse over Epstein scandal
https://arab.news/v3k5x
Disgraced ex UK envoy’s firm on brink of collapse over Epstein scandal
- Several major clients, including Barclays, Tesco and English football’s Premier League, have cut ties with the firm
- “The continuing maelstrom of political and media attention surrounding Peter Mandelson has made it challenging to continue with the business,” Global Counsel said
Poland slow to counter Russia’s ‘existential threat’: general
- The general highlighted a low “pace of technical modernization,” compared to increases in the army’s size
- Kukula said the Polish army should reach 500,000 soldiers by 2039
WARSAW: Russia poses an “existential threat” to Poland and its military is lagging, the country’s armed forces chief warned senior officials on Wednesday.
Poland, the largest country on NATO’s eastern flank and a neighbor of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, is the western alliance’s largest spender in relative terms.
This year, the country is allocating 4.8 percent of its GDP to defense, just shy of the alliance’s five percent target to be met by 2035.
However, that record defense spending was not enough to “make up for nearly three decades of chronic underfunding of the armed forces,” General Wieslaw Kukula, chief of the general staff, argued at the meeting, which included top officers, the defense minister and Poland’s president.
The general highlighted a low “pace of technical modernization,” compared to increases in the army’s size.
Kukula said the Polish army should reach 500,000 soldiers by 2039, compared with around 210,000 at present.
As a result of a lack of updates, some new Polish units “are not achieving combat readiness,” due to insufficient equipment, rather than a personnel shortage, the general argued.
Meanwhile, he added, “the Russian Federation remains an existential threat to Poland.”
Russia “is constantly reorganizing its forces, drawing on the lessons from its aggression in Ukraine, and building up the capacity for a conventional conflict with NATO countries,” he stressed.
Poland is to receive 43.7 billion euros ($51,5 billion) in loans under the European Union’s Security Action For Europe (SAFE) scheme, designed to strengthen Europe’s defensive capabilities.
Warsaw plans to use these funds to boost domestic arms production.
The Polish government claims that Poland will be able to access SAFE finance even if President Karol Nawrocki — backed by Poland’s conservative-nationalist opposition — vetos a law setting out domestic arrangements for its implementation.
Law and Justice (PiS) — the main opposition party — argues that SAFE could become a new tool for Brussels to place undue pressure on Poland, thanks to a planned mechanism for monitoring the funds, which they claim risks undermining Polish sovereignty.
