Chinese businessman with ties to disgraced royal Prince Andrew barred from U.K. over security concerns

London – A Chinese businessman with ties to disgraced British royal Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, has lost an appeal against a 2023 decision to bar him from the United Kingdom over national security concerns.

The man, who is not named in published judicial documents, had links to the Chinese government and was close enough to Andrew to be invited to his birthday party in 2020, according to a U.K. Special Immigration Appeals Commission judgement.

“I also hope that it is clear to you where you sit with my principal and indeed his family,” a letter sent to the man by Andrew’s top aid, Dominic Hampshire, said, according to the court’s judgement, which was published online. “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.” 

The letter from the duke’s aid also said: “We have 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.”

Hampshire wrote in another letter to the man that he had been empowered to act on behalf of Andrew concerning potential partners and investors in China for an international financial initiative.

“It was assessed that this demonstrated that the Applicant was in a position to generate relationships between senior Chinese officials and prominent UK figures which could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the Chinese State,” the U.K. judgement said Thursday, adding that the man had not given a full accounting of his relationship with Andrew to authorities, which it said had a “covert and clandestine” element to it. 

The judgement also said the unnamed businessman had concealed ties to bodies connected with the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front system, which seeks to gain influence and information to benefit the Chinese government.

The man had texts and other documents on his phone showing connections to the United Front system, including one text in which he identified himself as an overseas representative of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body central to the system. 

The judgement found the man 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 judgement said Andrew had been under a lot of pressure at the time of his close relationship with the man, and it was “obvious that the pressures on the Duke could make him vulnerable to the misuse of that sort of influence.”

Prince Andrew was stripped of all his military affiliations and royal patronages in 2022 after a lawsuit alleged that he sexually abused Virginia Giuffre when she was 17.

The judgement comes amid growing concerns over China’s influence abroad. In remarks in 2021, the head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency, which is akin to the CIA in the United States, called China the “single greatest priority” for U.K. intelligence services.

When approached by CBS News partner network BBC News about the story, Buckingham Palace declined to comment.