Mandelson-linked banker and Russian oligarch’s son-in-law behind Scots data centres

A Wall Street banker linked to disgraced Peter Mandelson and a Russian oligarch’s son-in-law are among the powerful figures behind the push for AI data centres in Scotland.

The Sunday Mail also uncovered links to interim Celtic chairman and ex-Labour MP Brian Wilson with a firm proposing a controversial “hyper-scaler” site in Fife.

There are fears the rapid expansion of the developments will destroy the environment and use massive amounts of energy and water leading to shortages and rising utility bills, while the AI they support threatens to eradicate thousands of jobs.

It comes as local activists disrupted a Highland clan gathering last week to protest a huge 500MW data centre in Hunterston, Ayrshire, pro-posed metres from the historic Hunter Castle.

We can reveal the company behind these plans, Eneus Energy Limited, is bankrolled by £360billion US private equity firm Carlyle, led by ex-Goldman Sachs president Harvey Schwartz.

View 8 Images

Schwartz, a Wall Street veteran, previously sat on the board of a London banking start-up beside the disgraced Lord Mandelson – which was this year slapped with a £2million fine for misconduct.

Dr Kat Jones, director of Action to Protect Rural Scotland, said: “There is a complete lack of transparency in the whole unseemly rush to get planning permission for hyperscale data centres in Scotland.

“This lack of transparency and accountability to local people is in the proposals, with the one at Hunterston not even disclosing how much power it will draw.

View 8 Images

“But it is also in who is behind them. We’re not being told who these data centres are being built for and why they are needed. It seems that there are wealthy influential backers joining this speculative rush.”

Schwartz, who was a major donor to Joe Biden in his 2020 election win over Donald Trump, was non-executive chairman of the Bank of London from 2021-24 with Mandelson his deputy.

The start-up had touted a $1.1billion valuation and trumpeted its status as only the second new clearing bank in the UK in more than 250 years.

However, the bank later unravelled amid heavy financial losses, with Schwartz – a former top Goldman Sachs executive – leaving in a boardroom exodus in 2024 along with Mandelson. The firm was fined £2million in March by the Bank of England’s prudential regulation authority for failing to act with integrity, including by repeatedly misleading the regulator about its capital position with fabricated documents.

View 8 Images

Mandelson later became the UK’s ambassador to Trump’s US under Keir Starmer despite failing security vetting and was sacked last year over his ties to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Eneus Energy also receives financing from GIC, which helps manage Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund and handles nearly £1trillion in assets.

The site of the proposed data centre is in the Hunterston Estate, north of West Kilbride and next to Hunterston Power Station.

It is home to the 900-year-old Hunter Castle, historic stronghold of Clan Hunter.

View 8 Images

Protesters gathered outside the castle last weekend amid a Clan Hunter gathering.

It comes as at least a dozen grassroots local groups opposed to hyperscale data centres in their area have sprung up in recent months.

At least 24 sites are proposed in Scotland, including 17 already in the planning system.

With one large hyperscaler capable of sucking up the power needs of two cities, campaigners say if they all went ahead it would dwarf Scotland’s total current energy demand. The Scottish Government is ­considering a freeze on massive data centres in light of the concerns.

It follows the collapse of plans for a supersized 1GW £15billion site in Irvine led by real estate investor Martin Bellamy, whose firm AI Pathfinder crumbled and had its assets frozen after being mired in acrimonious lawsuits.

Bellamy is married to Darina Kogan, the daughter of Russian-Israeli billionaire Valery Kogan who fell out with Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin after the Russian courts nationalised Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, which Kogan co-owned.

View 8 Images

Bellamy and his wife live in a £9million mansion in the Cotswolds near Oasis star Liam Gallagher – with the couple locked in a row with local residents over a bid to build holiday lets in their 38- acre estate.

We can also reveal how ILI Group, which is proposing a £5billion 600MW data centre on the outskirts of sleepy Fife village Auchtertool, is being helped by two ex-politicians with ties to Celtic football club.

View 8 Images

Ex-MP Brian Wilson, a former UK energy minister and current chairman of Celtic and Harris Tweed Hebrides, is an adviser to ILI’s board.

Its chairman is former Glasgow lord provost Dr Michael Kelly, a businessman who also sat on Celtic’s board of directors until 1994.

The Auchtertool project has been met with huge local protest, as has another recent planning application for a data centre in Larbert, Falkirk, led by developer Apatura.

Apatura is backed by Klint Ventures, a venture capital firm headquartered in Liechtenstein.

York-based Apatura has nine data centres in development in Scotland. Last year, its CEO Miles Hanglin said he’d been approached by “certain leading global hyperscalers” – major AI names such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google – looking for “large stakes in the north of the country where plentiful power is available”.

View 8 Images

In December, the firm hired former Google executive Michael Hunter to lead on its data centre portfolio.

We told in April how American AI giant CoreWeave pledged £1.5billion towards a massive £8.2billion data centre campus in Lanarkshire, which would get energy bill discounts from the UK ­Government as a designated “AI Growth Zone”.

The funding was announced during Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK last year, which saw the US president bring a raft of tech billionaires in his entourage.

Formerly a cryptocurrency mining firm, CoreWeave pivoted to cloud computing to become a major player in AI, striking deals with tech titans like Nvidia and Microsoft. Its CEO Michael Intrator is worth an ­estimated £4billion.

Get more Daily Record exclusives by signing up for free to Google’s preferred sources. Click HERE.