Poppy Wood, Neil Johnston and Isabel Oakeshott
London: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor forwarded a confidential Treasury briefing to a banker friend while he was trade envoy, London’s Telegraph has revealed.
The former prince tasked Amanda Thirsk, his deputy private secretary, with obtaining an internal government memo in February 2010 about the Icelandic financial crisis.
In correspondence seen by the Telegraph, Thirsk emailed Michael Ellam, the Treasury’s director general of international finance at the time, asking him to produce a briefing note for Mountbatten-Windsor on the Nordic nation.
On February 8, 2010, she wrote: “The Duke of York met with the prime minister of Iceland at Davos and would very much like to receive an update note on the latest position between the UK and Iceland on the matter of the deposits and the deposit scheme.”
Thirsk received the briefing note from a different civil servant at the Treasury a week later and forwarded it to Mountbatten-Windsor.
Two hours later, he passed the note on to Jonathan Rowland, his close friend and the former chief executive of Banque Havilland, a bank that had bought assets from a failed Icelandic lender a year earlier.
Mountbatten-Windsor, who was then Britain’s trade envoy, suggested the information might be useful to his friend “before you make your move”.
“I pass this on to you for comment and a suggestion or solution?” he wrote.
“The essence is that Amanda is getting signals that we should allow the democratic process [to] happen before you make your move. Interested in your opinion? A.”
Banque Havilland was connected to a major investigation by Icelandic authorities at the time.
Days before Mountbatten-Windsor forwarded the information, Iceland’s office of the special prosecutor raided the offices of Kaupthing Bank, part of which had just been acquired by Banque Havilland after the Icelandic institution collapsed.
Icelandic banks had expanded rapidly before the 2008 financial crisis and attracted customers from all over the world. When the banking system collapsed, to protect the nation’s economy, the Icelandic government prevented foreign depositors from taking their money out.
Many of the depositors who lost access to their cash were British, prompting a diplomatic row between Britain and Iceland.
In 2011, the British Serious Fraud Office raided Banque Havilland’s offices. At the time, it was reported that this was connected to an investigation into Kaupthing. Authorities never brought any charges.
The email disclosures raise fresh questions over the extent to which Mountbatten-Windsor may have been leaking sensitive information to his friends during his time as trade envoy, a post he held from 2001 to 2011.
Thames Valley Police are assessing whether to open an investigation into the claims after it emerged that the former prince had forwarded multiple private briefings to external sources, including convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In November 2010, Mountbatten-Windsor forwarded reports from visits to Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam and China to the disgraced financier five minutes after his special assistant had sent them to him.
He also forwarded Epstein a confidential brief on investment opportunities in Afghanistan’s Helmand province the following month.
Similar allegations against former British cabinet minister Peter Mandelson – claiming that he shared sensitive government information with Epstein when he was business secretary – have prompted a police investigation into the former Labour politician.
Emails from the Epstein files also show a close personal relationship between the then prince and Rowland’s family around the time of the correspondence regarding Iceland.
In an email sent to Epstein several months earlier, in September 2009, an individual – whose name has been redacted by the US Department of Justice – said they “will finalise F summary for you next week. Can’t now cause she went to nepal paying for the first class flight with her rowland bank loan”.
“F” was the email nickname that Epstein and his associates often used to refer to Sarah Ferguson, Mountbatten-Windsor’s ex-wife and long-time confidante.
“Rowland” could also refer to David Rowland, Jonathan Rowland’s father and the founder of Banque Havilland, to whom the former prince was also close. In May 2010, Mountbatten-Windsor sent an email to Epstein referring to David Rowland as his “trusted money man”.
Other emails, thought to be from David Stern, the former duke of York’s then aide, show meetings between the royal and Jonathan Rowland in 2010. It includes a dinner that the pair attended in Hong Kong in October 2010.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s close relations with the Rowlands have previously come under scrutiny.
Bloomberg News reported in 2021 that the former duke of York took a £1.5 million ($2.89 million) loan with Banque Havilland in December 2017, which was paid off 11 days later by companies associated with David Rowland.
The Mail on Sunday reported in 2019 that the former prince co-owned a business with the Rowlands in a Caribbean tax haven.
Rowland and Banque Havilland were approached for comment.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s close relations with Rowland have previously been scrutinised.
The Telegraph, London
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