Chinese associate of Prince Andrew banned from UK as national security risk

LONDON - A Chinese businessman, who had forged close links with Prince Andrew and was authorised to act on his behalf to seek investors in China, has been banned from Britain on national security grounds.

The 50-year-old man, who has been granted anonymity and is named only as H6, was taken off a flight from Beijing to London in February 2023 and told that Britain intended to ban him from the country. This happened the following month.

H6 appealed against the ban at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), which rejected his case in a written ruling on Thursday – the first time the reported relationship has come to light.

Buckingham Palace no longer comments on matters relating to Andrew, who was removed from royal duties by the palace in 2022, and Reuters was unable to reach him or a representative for comment.

The ban on the Chinese businessman came after the contents of his phone were downloaded when he was stopped under counter-terrorism laws at a UK border in 2021, the ruling said.

It said this revealed Prince Andrew had authorised him to set up an international financial initiative to engage with potential partners and investors in China. The ruling did not say what the fund was intended for.

Documents on his phone suggested H6 had "deliberately obscured his links" with the Chinese Communist Party and the United Front Work Department and been in a position to generate relationships between prominent UK figures and senior Chinese officials which Beijing could leverage, the ruling stated.

The United Front Work Department is a network of groups that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has described as a "magic weapon" to bolster Beijing's reach abroad.

The Chinese embassy in London was not immediately available to comment after working hours.

BIRTHDAY PARTY

SIAC's decision revealed a letter from a senior advisor to Andrew to H6 from March 2020, which noted H6 had been invited to Andrew's birthday party that month and stated: "I also hope that it is clear to you where you sit with my principal and indeed his family.

"You should never underestimate the strength of that relationship ... outside of his closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on."

It added that following a meeting between Andrew, H6 and the adviser they had "wisely navigated our way around former Private Secretaries and we have found a way to carefully remove those people who we don't completely trust".

"Under your guidance, we found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house in Windsor," the letter said. The ruling did not say who the people were or give the reason for potential distrust.

The prince, 64, the eighth in line to the throne, was a roving UK trade ambassador from 2001-2011.

He was forced to step aside from public duties in 2019 over his friendship with the late U.S. sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew has always denied any accusations of wrongdoing. In 2022, the royal family removed his military links and royal patronages.

The SIAC ruling referred to a 2021 document recovered from H6's device which listed talking points for a call between him and Andrew which said the prince "is in a desperate situation and will grab onto anything".

Judge Charles Bourne said in the ruling that H6 had "won a significant degree, one could say an unusual degree, of trust from a senior member of the royal family who was prepared to enter into business activities with him".

The judge added: "That occurred in a context where, as the contemporaneous documents record, the Duke was under considerable pressure and could be expected to value (H6's) loyal support.

"It is obvious that the pressures on the Duke could make him vulnerable to the misuse of that sort of influence."

Bourne said Britain's Home Office was entitled to conclude that H6 had significant links to the Chinese Communist Party and the United Front Work Department and that there was potential for him "leveraging" his relationship with Andrew.

(Reporting by Sam Tobin and Michael Holden; editing by Philippa Fletcher)