Jeffrey Epstein paid for Lord Mandelson’s travel on two separate occasions in 2003 totalling more than $7,400 (£5,400), according to documents released by the US House of Representatives Oversight Committee.

Mandelson was sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US on Thursday over his links to the late convicted paedophile.

The government said the “depth and extent” of Mandelson’s relationship with the financier had not been known when he was appointed last year.

This is the first time financial evidence of Epstein paying for Mandelson’s travel has come to light. The BBC has contacted Mandelson for a response.

Just months after Mandelson contributed a 10-page note to Epstein’s 2003 “50th birthday book”, in which he referred to Epstein as his “best pal”, Epstein paid for Mandelson’s travel.

It is unclear where and when Mandelson’s travel took place.

The first travel payment by Epstein is dated 4 April 2003 – before he was convicted in 2008 – and cost $3,844.90.

A week later, Epstein paid a further $3,642.06.

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.