{"id":115532,"date":"2026-02-15T23:02:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T23:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=115532"},"modified":"2026-02-15T23:02:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T23:02:16","slug":"andrews-time-as-trade-envoy-should-be-investigated-says-vince-cable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=115532","title":{"rendered":"Andrew\u2019s time as trade envoy should be investigated, says Vince Cable"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor\u2019s time as trade envoy should be investigated for possible corruption, a former business secretary said.<\/p>\n

Files released by the US Department of Justice appear to show the former prince forwarded UK government documents and other commercial information to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n

Speaking about reports that Andrew leaked sensitive information about the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Aston Martin while serving as a trade envoy, Sir Vince Cable said his behaviour was \u201ctotally unacceptable\u201d.<\/p>\n

Andrew has always consistently and strenuously denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

Sir Vince, who was secretary of state for business and trade for some of the former duke\u2019s time as trade envoy, said: \u201cWe need a police or DPP [director of public prosecutions] check on whether criminal corruption took place and a government investigation into how this was allowed to happen\u201d.<\/p>\n

In his role as a UK trade envoy, which ran from 2001 to 2011, the then-Duke of York travelled globally and enjoyed privileged access to senior government and business contacts worldwide.<\/p>\n

In 2010, he apparently forwarded an email conversation about Aston Martin and the Royal Bank of Scotland to a contact, David Stern, who then passed it on to disgraced financier Epstein.<\/p>\n

That conversation with Terence Allen, an investment banker based in Abu Dhabi, includes details of RBS\u2019s plans to restructure and unflattering reflections on the chief executive, Stephen Hester.<\/p>\n

The email also describes \u201cconflicts between internal parties\u201d at Aston Martin.<\/p>\n

The BBC has contacted Stern for comment.<\/p>\n

It is unclear how much of this information came from his role as a trade envoy. Andrew was a customer of RBS and may have spoken to the management in that capacity or in another.<\/p>\n

The bank was majority-owned by the taxpayer at the time.<\/p>\n

The same year, Andrew appears to have forwarded government reports from visits to Vietnam, Singapore and China to Epstein,\u00a0according to the recently published files.<\/p>\n

Emails from a different source\u00a0have also emerged, suggesting he passed information about Iceland from the Treasury to a banker contact, Jonathan Rowland.<\/p>\n

According to official guidance, trade envoys have a duty of confidentiality over sensitive, commercial, or political information about their official visits.<\/p>\n

Thames Valley Police on Wednesday said it had spoken with specialists from the Crown Prosecution Service about allegations that Mountbatten-Windsor shared confidential reports from his role as the UK\u2019s trade envoy with Epstein.<\/p>\n

Labour MP and women and equalities committee chair Sarah Owens said Mountbatten-Windsor must face questions from police and Parliament, while her colleague Rachael Maskell told the BBC Mountbatten-Windsor had been \u201cconservative with the truth\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to know what was happening in those circles and therefore I think it would be right to be able to scrutinise, have transparency and to get to the bottom of all these dealings,\u201d Maskell said.<\/p>\n

Maskell said Andrew should also be stripped of his succession rights to the throne, as well as a councillor of state.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these titles and positions need to be addressed so we\u2019re just left with Andrew the citizen and a citizen that is fully accountable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The King has spoken of his \u201cprofound concern\u201d over the allegations of misconduct against his brother, and Buckingham Palace said it\u00a0stands \u201cready to support\u201d the police if approached.<\/p>\n

The former prince continues to be dogged by his links to Epstein after the latest tranche of documents released by the US government included\u00a0pictures of Mountbatten-Windsor, fully clothed, kneeling on all fours over a woman\u00a0lying on the ground.<\/p>\n

He is facing growing pressure to testify in the US about his links to Epstein and last week\u00a0moved from his Windsor home to the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s time as trade envoy should be investigated for possible corruption, a former business secretary said.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16973,12848,1910,10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrew-mountbatten-windsor","category-epstein-files","category-international","category-politics","category-popular"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}