Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York is a book many, including Prince Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, would have preferred not to have been written. It’s also one the ex-couple went to great lengths to bury.
For years, a curated narrative about the Duke and Duchess of York has existed, policed by armies of lawyers and P.R. people and shaped by a symbiotic relationship with the press—one disparaging article about the duchess based on an interview I had given to a paper was removed in exchange for an interview with her.
The couple’s staff have been forced to sign non-disclosure agreements—one person even told me that she once discovered the staff quarters to be bugged—and the royal exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act, coupled with the convention that parliamentary questions are not asked about members of the royal family, have further shielded them from any proper scrutiny.
In the course of my reporting, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office told ambassadors not to talk to me about Andrew’s time as the special representative for trade and investment (a position he held for a decade, until 2011), and for years the Information Rights Unit of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the Freedom of Information section of the Department for Business and Trade deployed every possible Freedom of Information Act exemption to avoid releasing documents relating to Prince Andrew’s time as a taxpayer-funded civil servant. The Department for Business and Trade’s internal computer has reportedly been wiped of any reference to Prince Andrew.
Many of these documents should, by law, be in the National Archives. They would reveal the identities and dealings of the businessmen who accompanied Andrew on these trade missions, and who, my research shows, were often there to serve his private interests rather than his public duties and included Jeffrey Epstein. The prince also took along his daughters—with all the attendant security costs—who built a useful set of contacts which they have subsequently exploited since, not least in the Middle East.
What could possibly be worrying the couple?
First of all, as my book shows, and contrary to what the Yorks have said, the relationship that both of them had with Jeffrey Epstein began earlier, was possibly deeper, and lasted longer than either has publicly acknowledged, and the financier settled far more of the duchess’s debts than has hitherto been revealed.
But, in my investigation, the relationship with Epstein turned out to be the least of the Yorks’ misdeeds. The real scandal is how the family have leveraged their royal status for their own personal financial gain, allowing the couple, though divorced since 1996, to live in the 30-room Royal Lodge, in Windsor; to buy a Swiss chalet for $24 million; and for Andrew to acquire a collection of luxury watches that includes several Rolexes and Cartiers as well as a Patek Philippe worth more than $200,000—not to mention a $295,000 Bentley and a succession of Range Rovers.
In Prince Andrew’s case, he has used the contacts he built—first as a special representative and thereafter with Pitch@Palace, a charity aimed at connecting investors and entrepreneurs—to do business for himself. This is particularly true in China, where he had the help of Yang Tengbo, a businessman accused of spying for Beijing and banned from Britain by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. Based on my reporting, ambassadors accompanying the prince on some of his trade trips were asked to shoehorn in meetings for his personal business associates, including his business advisers David and Jonathan Rowland.
David Rowland, a front-row guest at the wedding of Andrew’s daughter Eugenie (security costs for the taxpayer: $2.67 million) who had tea with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles at Balmoral in the summer of 2010, paid off more than $53,000 of monies the Duchess of York owed her P.R. spokeswoman. A $2 million loan made to Andrew by Rowland’s Banque Havilland was also repaid using moneys transferred from a company controlled by the Rowland family.
Given its nonprofit status, Pitch@Palace rightfully benefited from the use of royal palaces, royal bands, and supportive appearances by other members of the royal family, including the Queen. But Andrew also set up a for-profit overseas arm under the same name, which made him the beneficiary of 2 percent of any investment raised. Separately, Andrew was found to be taking a 1 percent commission in a $511 million deal organized by a Swiss firm for a Greek water company to invest in Kazakhstan.
Given the secrecy around the family, their financial dealings can essentially only be gleaned from legal documents when there is a dispute.
One case was that of the theater company Gate Ventures, when its Chinese investors queried where their $25 million investment had gone, with little to show for it. The duchess, meanwhile, had received $96,000 a year as a non-executive director, more than $265,000 for “marketing and promotion,” and a nearly $120,000 loan for one of her companies, none of which were ever adequately explained.
Another recent case in the British High Court revealed a series of payments to the York family made by Alphabet Capital, including nearly $1 million to Andrew from Selman Turk, who had just won an award at Pitch@Palace; nearly $300,000 to the duchess, the origins of which were never fully explained; and more than $33,000 to Eugenie, from a “long-standing family friend” whom she later admitted to not knowing.
Eugenie and her older sister, Beatrice, have long been involved in supporting their father’s financial schemes, and they have now developed their own initiatives, which has led them to being regulars at Saudi economic and investment conferences. As one source told me, “Both Beatrice and Genie have deep ties to many Arab countries.… Everything was arranged by their father, who made sure they got connected to the most powerful people in the Mideast.”
The real scandal surrounding the York family is not their close ties to Jeffrey Epstein—shocking as that is—but the financial corruption at the heart of the royal family. More misdeeds surrounding the Yorks’ financial activities are certain to emerge. It is those, rather than Andrew’s links to Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, which will present the real threat to the monarchy.
Despite all of this, the story that has generated worldwide headlines is a throwaway paragraph in my book about a fight that occurred between Prince Andrew and Prince Harry, which forms part of the Daily Mail’s serialization. Immediately, Harry’s press spokesman issued a terse denial and said a legal letter had been sent to the paper. (This in itself is strange, as the obvious target should have been my publishers and myself.)
My source for the claim is an employee in the royal household, whose information has been hitherto reliable, and I stand by it. Yet Harry has a long history of taking legal action against the Daily Mail, so it will be interesting if this is more than attempted intimidation and bluff. Whatever happens, I am grateful to him, because his intervention has catapulted the book to No. 1 on Amazon.
Andrew Lownie is a British historian and the author of several books, including The Mountbattens: Their Lives and Loves and Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke & Duchess of Windsor
