Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, repeatedly exploited his taxpayer-funded role as Britain's trade envoy to work behind the scenes for his close friend, the multi-millionaire financier David Rowland.
E-mails reveal that while on official trade missions meant to promote UK business, Andrew was quietly promoting a private Luxembourg-based bank for the super-rich, owned by Rowland and his family.
The Prince allowed the Rowlands to shoehorn meetings into his official trade tours so they could expand their bank and woo powerful and wealthy clients.
When Andrew was facing the sack from his envoy role because of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, Rowland's son and business lieutenant, Jonathan, suggested their commercial activities could continue 'under the radar'. Andrew responded: 'I like your thinking.'
He also passed them private government documents they had no right to see. It can also be revealed that, at the time, Andrew co-owned a business with the Rowlands in a secretive Caribbean tax haven. It was to be used to lure the Prince's wealthy Royal contacts to invest in a tax-free offshore fund. Prince Andrew had a 40 per cent stake in a firm based in the British Virgin Islands called Inverness Asset Management that was in existence until March this year. A document reveals that 'contacts' of the company – including Royal families, heads of state, government institutions and wealthy individuals – would be targeted as potential investors in a separate investment fund to be based in the Cayman Islands and promising a tax-free income.
Rowland inserted into Andrew's China schedule a meeting with Louis Cheung, the president of Ping An, the world's largest insurance company, worth an estimated £171 billion, and proposed that they could become business partners. In an astonishing breach of protocol, Andrew's aide, Amanda Thirsk, handed the Rowlands a Foreign Office diplomatic cable intended only for government officials that contained details of Andrew's one-to-one conversations with senior Chinese politicians
On another occasion, Andrew demanded a private briefing memo from Treasury chiefs about the Icelandic financial crisis, then passed it to the Rowlands. Months earlier, they had bought part of a collapsed Icelandic bank in a £86 million deal.
Andrew also took Jonathan Rowland on an official trade mission to Saudi Arabia where the pair met Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abulaziz al Saud, the second son of the country's current monarch. Following that meeting, Mr Rowland told the Saudi royal, via an aide, that Andrew was considering becoming a partner in his family's bank and asked him if he would like a stake in it, too. In one exchange of emails with the Saudi Prince, Mr Rowland boasted that he acted as a middle man not just for Prince Andrew but for the British Royal Family. During another taxpayer-funded trade trip, Prince Andrew lobbied the King of Bahrain about the Rowlands' plan to open an offshoot of their bank in the Middle Eastern country. He later telephoned an official to help get the potentially lucrative venture off the ground.
In 2009, Andrew publicly launched the Rowlands' bank in Luxembourg. Bought from the ashes of a collapsed Icelandic financial institution, it was renamed Banque Havilland, after Mr Rowland's Channel Island home. It offered discreet private banking services for the world's billionaires. Mr Rowland was invited to Balmoral as Andrew's guest in 2010 and reportedly met the Queen and had tea with Prince Charles. Four months later, Mr Rowland paid £40,000 to help clear the massive debts of the Duke's former wife Sarah Ferguson.
Chris Bryant, who was a Foreign Office Minister at the time Andrew held his trade envoy role, demanded a parliamentary inquiry into the Duke's business behaviour, which he called 'morally offensive'. 'It all just stinks,' said Mr Bryant. 'I don't think he has ever been able to draw a distinction between his own personal interest and the national interest. It's morally offensive.
Nigel Mills, a Tory member of the Public Accounts Committee added: 'He clearly was never fit to hold that office. Anyone in public life knows these rules about separating your own interests from those of the job you are doing. What he is doing here isn't even close to the line – it's a million miles over it.
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