Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor allegedly billed taxpayers for massages and excessive travel costs while serving as the UK’s trade envoy, retired civil servants have said.
The former prince was arrested last week on suspicion of misconduct in public office after being accused of sharing sensitive information linked to his role as trade envoy with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Mountbatten-Windsor spent 11 hours in custody on his 66th birthday while officers searched his home on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, before he was released under investigation.
Downing Street declined to comment on the allegations that Mountbatten-Windsor had charged taxpayers for massages and excessive travel costs while he was trade envoy.
Here, The i Paper takes a look at the claims that have surfaced about his conduct as trade envoy.
Taxpayer-funded massages and excessive travel costs
One former civil servant said they refused to pay to cover the costs of a massage for Mountbatten-Windsor, but were overruled by senior staff, telling the BBC: “I thought it was wrong… I’d said we mustn’t pay it, but we ended up paying it anyway.”
A former Whitehall official, who oversaw finances, told the BBC separately that they saw similar expenses for Mountbatten-Windsor’s trips and had “absolutely no doubt” about the authenticity of the claim.
They said they were shocked by the scale of his spending and believed he claimed for excessive flights and unreasonable numbers of hotel rooms for his entourage.
Mountbatten-Windsor leaving Aylsham Police Station after his arrest (Photo: Phil Noble/Reuters)“I couldn’t believe it… it was like it wasn’t real money, they weren’t spending any of their own money,” they said.
In a videotaped interview under oath in 2009, Epstein’s former Florida housekeeper Juan Alessi said Mountbatten-Windsor would have “daily massages” when he visited Epstein.
The former prince did not respond to a request for comment but has always denied wrongdoing in his associations with Epstein, or any personal gain from his role as trade envoy.
Dinner with a model
Mountbatten-Windsor had dinner with a model on an official taxpayer-funded trip to China, while his aide sent photos of the pair to Jeffrey Epstein, The Times has reported.
Emails released by US authorities appear to show that he had allowed Epstein to arrange meetings on his behalf while ostensibly serving the public.
In one email, Mountbatten-Windsor’s fixer and aide David Stern apparently sent Epstein a link to pictures of the Chinese actress Miya Muqi with Andrew. He wrote: “We have dinner in Beijing on Sunday night with this P.”
In another photo found among the documents by The Times, the former duke was pictured sitting on a bamboo raft with a young woman.
Sharing confidential information
Mountbatten-Windsor is currently under investigation by police over claims he knowingly shared confidential information with Jeffrey Epstein from his official work as trade envoy in 2010 and 2011.
Emails from the latest release of the Epstein files appear to show the former prince passing on reports of visits to Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam, and confidential details of investment opportunities.
Trade envoys have a duty of confidentiality over sensitive, commercial, or political information about their official visits, according to government rules.
On 7 October 2010, documents appear to show Mountbatten-Windsor sent Epstein details of his official upcoming trips as trade envoy to Singapore, Vietnam, Shenzhen in China, and Hong Kong, where he was accompanied Epstein’s business associates.
After the trip, on 30 November, he appears to have forwarded official reports of those visits, sent by his then-special assistant Amit Patel, to Epstein five minutes after receiving them.
On Christmas Eve in 2010, Mountbatten-Windsor appeared to have looped Epstein in on a confidential brief on investment opportunities connected with reconstruction work in Helmand province in Afghanistan.
In another 2020 email seen by The Telegraph, the then-prince appeared to have forwarded a briefing note that had been shared by the Treasury’s director general of international finance.
The internal government memo had been about a diplomatic row between Britain and Iceland over British deposits lost in the 2008 banking crisis.
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