How did Mandy raise £2.5m for house?

Attention is focused once again on the property dealings of Lord Mandelson, Labour's colourful Business Secretary, who in 1998 was forced to resign (for the first time) from Tony Blair's cabinet after it was revealed that he had failed to declare a personal, interest-free loan given to him by Geoffrey Robinson, who at the time was Labour's Paymaster General.

The London Evening Standard asks how Mandelson was able to finance his most recent acquisition, a £2.5 million villa near Regent's Park bought in 2006 and where he now lives having returned to London from Brussels.

Using publicly available records from the Land Registry and Companies House, the Standard has examined Lord M's finances, including proceeds from a decade in the property market. It concludes that with "even the most generous possible analysis", taking into account the proceeds of the sale of a home in his old constituency, Hartlepool, a legacy from his mother, Mary, and adding in the likely mortgage he would have managed to get from a bank or building society based on his salary, there appears to be a shortfall of between £250,000 and £400,000.

The disclosure, says the Standard, is likely to fuel speculation as to whether Mandelson has again partly financed a property purchase through "the generosity of a rich benefactor" in the same way Robinson lent him £373,000 to buy a house in Notting Hill in 1998.

A spokeswoman for Lord Mandelson refused to answer when asked if the politician had received any gifts or loans, other than his mortgage, to help him buy the Regent's Park house. In a five-word statement, she said that the Standard had "made inaccurate assumptions" but, when pressed, refused to elaborate. ·