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In early 2026, British politics was rocked by the unfolding Peter Mandelson story, a senior political figure, former ambassador and long-time statesman, now under police investigation over his alleged links to Jeffrey Epstein, that have called into question aspects of his public role and decision-making. The criminal investigation into alleged misconduct in public office has not only dominated headlines but also sparked urgent debate about how leaders and institutions vet individuals before appointing them to positions of trust.
What was once assumed to be “politics” has quickly become a corporate and governance issue. Companies with even indirect connections to political figures or government bodies are having to explain contact, access and informal interactions that were previously taken for granted.
Boards love to talk about risk appetite. Heat maps get circulated. Tolerances are debated.
Then the conversation turns to public office misconduct and then the room goes very quiet.
It still feels, to many directors, like something safely filed under “politics”. Interesting, perhaps, but external. Uncomfortable, certainly, but not a corporate risk in the way cyber, fraud or regulatory enforcement are.
That assumption is now one of the most expensive mistakes boards make.
Recent headlines follow a now familiar script. Historical allegations resurface. The police confirm they are “reviewing” material. No formal investigation is announced. No one is arrested. No conclusions are reached. Yet within hours reputations are damaged, institutions scramble, and anyone with even a tangential connection finds themselves explaining emails, meetings and introductions they barely remember.
For businesses, that is the critical point. The legal outcome is often irrelevant. The story itself is the risk.
The most damaging consequences almost never come from criminal proceedings. They come from defending commercial decisions in court, losing regulator confidence, watching financial partners withdraw, and seeing good people leave because they do not want their careers tied to an organisation appearing in the wrong headlines. Trust erodes faster than any share price.
This is not about paranoia. It is about realism. You do not need charges, arrests or convictions to lose board confidence, regulatory goodwill or commercial credibility. The market does not wait for verdicts. It judges conduct and how quickly an organisation responds when scrutiny arrives.
Almost every scandal presented as a lapse in personal judgment, an unwise relationship, a poorly chosen intermediary, a blurred boundary between public role and private access, has a corporate subplot. Somewhere in the background is an organisation that benefited, participated, failed to ask questions, or simply failed to keep proper records. When the spotlight swings round, the problem is rarely criminal exposure. It is governance failure.
Companies are still routinely caught out by how quickly they are pulled into public-sector misconduct narratives. They assume that unless they bribed someone or broke a law, they are spectators rather than participants. In reality, proximity is enough. Contractors end up named in procurement disputes. Suppliers appear in inquiry chronologies. Professional firms are asked to explain how “normal practice” came to look questionable with the benefit of hindsight.
Attempts at managing media and stakeholder response in situations like the Mandelson story have shown that visible, staged attempts to control the media narrative or change perceptions can quickly become part of the narrative rather than contain it. In today’s febrile social media environment traditional crisis PR, even when expertly delivered, may not blunt the reputational impact once scrutiny has begun.
This is not theoretical. UK businesses have already experienced how governance failures and public scrutiny can translate directly into commercial damage, even before any legal findings.
When Corporate Travel Management became embroiled in controversy linked to government contracts and alleged governance failures, trading was halted and executive leadership resigned amid intense public and regulatory focus, illustrating how rapidly operational stability can be disrupted once scrutiny hits.
Similarly, The Consulting Association was effectively shut down after its unlawful practices were exposed, leading to a parliamentary inquiry and compensation schemes that extended far beyond the organisation’s initial misconduct.
The collapse of Patisserie Valerie after accounting irregularities were revealed shows how a governance issue not a criminal conviction can wipe out investor confidence, suspend trading and destroy business value almost overnight.
These examples demonstrate that once governance failures become public, external stakeholders react rapidly and often long before any formal investigations conclude.
Misconduct in Public Office is not a modern regulatory offence with neat statutory edges. It is an old common law charge, deliberately broad, revived whenever serious trust is alleged to have been abused by someone acting in an official capacity. The legal test is simple: Was the person acting as a public official? Did they deliberately misuse or neglect that role? Was the conduct serious enough to undermine public trust? Was there any lawful excuse?
When prosecutors reach for it, the consequences spread well beyond the individual under scrutiny. Corporates become part of the story not because they set out to do anything wrong, but because they were there.
In practice, this is rarely about explicit corruption. It is far more mundane - informal information shared with insiders, procurement processes that appear unusually favourable, regulators conveying guidance off-the-record, or introductions made through intermediaries without documentation.
None of this requires criminal intent. It just requires hindsight, scrutiny, and a public mood with little patience for blurred lines.
Many boards only discover how weak their controls are when journalists, auditors or parliamentary committees start asking questions. By then it is too late to reconstruct why certain meetings happened, who authorised them, or what safeguards were meant to be in place.
A serious approach to risk appetite means accepting that every interaction with government, regulators, politicians and intermediaries carries potential exposure. It means assuming disclosure, not discretion. If something would be awkward to see quoted in an inquiry transcript, it should be fixed long before anyone asks for the documents.
Informal channels may feel efficient, but they age badly and are usually indefensible under pressure.
For directors, general counsel and compliance leaders, public office misconduct should no longer be treated as background noise or someone else’s problem. It is an instant corporate crisis with a long tail. The meaningful test is not what you do after the story breaks, but what you have already done to make sure your house is in order.
Investigate early. Document aggressively. Overreact if necessary.
Because when the questions come, they are always the same: “What did you know, and what did you do about it?”
This is the point at which many organisations realise that what looked like a political issue was in fact a business crime and regulatory problem hiding in plain sight. I have spent years advising companies, boards and senior individuals on exactly these moments, when an internal concern suddenly acquires external scrutiny, when regulators arrive before any prosecutor does, and when informal decisions are judged formally and in public.
As Head of Business Crime & Regulatory, my work sits at the intersection where governance, enforcement and reputation collide. I help boards stress-test their exposure before issues escalate, guide organisations through internal investigations and regulatory engagement, and support directors and executives who find themselves personally under pressure as scrutiny intensifies. The moral of the story is simple: prevention is better than cure.
The most effective interventions rarely happen after a headline has done the damage. They happen earlier when a near miss is treated as a warning, when controls are tightened before they are tested, and when difficult and awkward questions are asked internally rather than by someone with a microphone.
Public office misconduct is not an abstract risk, and it is not confined to politics. It is a live governance issue for any organisation that deals with the state. Addressed early, it is manageable. Ignored, it has a habit of defining the story for you.
George Kampanella (Partner) Head of Business Crime & Regulatory, Taylor Rose
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