Updated ,first published
London: The King’s younger brother has brought disgrace on himself and shame on the royal family in the biggest scandal to have rocked the House of Windsor. The next steps for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor will compound the enormous damage now that he has been arrested.
One key fact about the arrest is that it does not concern his treatment of women or his relations with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the source of most of the attention on the former prince over the past decade.
The arrest is about misconduct in public office and therefore relates to his time as a trade envoy. He held a government position and was entrusted with confidential information about trade deals and investment opportunities. He is accused of leaking this to help his friend, Jeffrey Epstein.
This means the police will not only be relying on the Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice. They could have access to British government files, and interviews with government officials, to find out more about how this confidential information was used. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is likely to be exposed to many more revelations over time.
It is hard to be sure about what Andrew sent Epstein because of the challenge of going through the Department of Justice files. Nobody can be certain that every document has been found, even though hundreds of reporters have been going through them for weeks, because the files are not easy to search.
We know that Andrew forwarded an investment document about Afghanistan and a report on trade opportunities in Asia. We know that he maintained his relationship with Epstein after he said he had broken off contact, and we also know that he kept his ties to another man, David Stern, who kept Epstein informed about what Andrew was doing.
The former prince is entitled to the presumption of innocence. All that can be said at this point is that leaking government documents is a serious offence, and that a member of the royal family should face scrutiny just as much as anyone.
We do not know the line of inquiry the police pursued after they visited him early in the morning at Sandringham, in Norfolk. The timing suggests the questions were extensive, given that he was not released from custody in a police station until about 11 hours after the police arrived at his home.
British authorities say misconduct in public office carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. “The offence concerns serious wilful abuse or neglect of the power or responsibilities of the public office held,” says the Crown Prosecution Service. “There must be a direct link between the misconduct and an abuse of those powers or responsibilities.”
It also says the offence should be strictly confined and is committed when someone “wilfully neglects” their public duty. A lot will depend on what investigators find out about the number of documents sent to Epstein and the gravity of their contents.
A second key point is that the claims against Andrew, based on documents that only emerged in the last three weeks, now go well beyond the longstanding concerns about his private life. They are about integrity in public office – and whether he betrayed the trust of the British public.
At heart, this is a damning claim against a member of the royal family, and it should require Andrew to answer the claims in public. So far, his response to the latest Epstein files has been to remain silent. This will be impossible to sustain.
This is a dramatic moment for the media and a sobering moment for the royal family. It is right to call it the biggest scandal for the House of Windsor, the family that assumed that name under King George V in 1917.
The death of Princess Diana in 1997 was a tragedy, not a scandal. The abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936 was a crisis at the top of the monarchy and government, but not a scandal: the king chose his partner, Wallis Simpson, over the crown.
There is no parallel in recent royal history for what Andrew has done. A big part of the concern about his behaviour is about the treatment of women in Epstein’s tawdry world, but it is also about money and power. The most fundamental question is whether Andrew betrayed the public by using his princely privilege for personal gain.
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David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.
