The correspondence covers Whitehall thinking at the time of a major economic crisis, and it is highly unusual for such top-level discussions to be circulated outside of the British government. The exchange took place a year after Epstein, the late financier, pled guilty to solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18. Brown, the former prime minister, said in a statement Monday that he had asked Britain’s top civil servant “to investigate the disclosure of confidential and market sensitive information from the then Business Department during the global financial crisis.” Brown said he had previously requested a probe to the matter last year, when Mandelson resigned as British ambassador to Washington, but had now “written to ask for a wider and more intensive enquiry to take place into the wholly unacceptable disclosure” of sensitive papers. ‘Asset base’ The note in question was written by then-Prime Minister Brown’s senior policy adviser Nick Butler — and highlighted the U.K.’s “very substantial asset base” as the government considered selling off public assets to deal with …