Why Did Buckingham Palace Receive Prince Andrew’s 30,000 Emails?

Prince Andrew emails are at the centre of renewed scrutiny after court documents revealed that a 30,000-email archive was delivered to Buckingham Palace in 2020.

Buckingham Palace received an archive of about 30,000 emails relating to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s business dealings in 2020, nearly six years before his arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office, according to High Court documents.

The material was handed to the Lord Chamberlain, the most senior officer in the Royal Household, a post held at the time by Lord Peel. A High Court judgment in April 2021 recorded that a copy of the archive had been provided for the Lord Chamberlain in May 2020. A second ruling, in June 2022, referred to an email dated 10 July 2020 stating that the emails had been “delivered to Buckingham Palace”.

The disclosure, first reported by the BBC in late May, has raised questions about what the Royal Household knew about Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s commercial activities, when it knew it, and what if anything was done with the material. The Palace has declined to say.

“Since there is an ongoing police enquiry concerning Mr Mountbatten-Windsor, it is not possible to provide any comment on these matters,” a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said.

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor has consistently denied any wrongdoing and has said he derived no personal benefit from his role as trade envoy. He has not been charged with any offence.

Prince Andrew Emails: What the Court Documents Reveal

The emails were taken from the account of Jonathan Rowland, a personal business contact of the former prince and the former chief executive of Banque Havilland. Court records indicate the archive covers correspondence up to June 2013 and includes material relating to Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s financial dealings and his period as the United Kingdom’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment, a government appointment he held from 2001 to 2011.

The full contents have never been published, and it is not publicly known how many of the messages refer to Mr Mountbatten-Windsor.

The archive reached the Palace by an unusual route. According to the High Court judgments, the emails became the subject of a legal dispute between Mr Rowland and his father, the financier David Rowland, and the retail entrepreneur Kevin Stanford, who obtained copies. Court papers say Mr Stanford offered the archive to authorities in Monaco and Luxembourg and shared it with a number of individuals, among them the Lord Chamberlain and at least one journalist.

Jonathan Rowland has previously denied that he or his father used contacts made during travels with Mr Mountbatten-Windsor to promote business deals or investments.

The Iceland briefing

The significance of the archive rests partly on what was published from it earlier this year.

In February, the Telegraph published emails indicating that in 2010, while serving as trade envoy, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor requested a confidential briefing from Treasury officials on problems in Iceland’s banking sector, and then passed it to Jonathan Rowland.

The request was made through Amanda Thirsk, then his deputy private secretary, who received a briefing note from a Treasury civil servant roughly a week after an official visit to Iceland. According to the published correspondence, the note was an update on the position between the UK and Iceland over deposits and the deposit guarantee scheme, at a time when the two countries were in dispute over compensation for British savers who lost money in the collapse of three Icelandic banks after the 2008 financial crisis.

David Rowland had taken over the Luxembourg arm of the failed Icelandic bank Kaupthing, which became Banque Havilland, about a year earlier. In forwarding the briefing, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor wrote that he thought the information might be useful “before you make your move”.

Jonathan Rowland told the BBC he had “no idea” about the reference to him in the emails, and that the messages quoted came from legal proceedings some time ago. He has confirmed that the correspondence originated from his account, which indicates the same messages would have formed part of the archive later sent to the Palace.

Banque Havilland subsequently attracted regulatory attention and sanctions from authorities in the United Kingdom and the European Union.

The police investigation

Thames Valley Police arrested Mr Mountbatten-Windsor on 19 February, his 66th birthday, on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was held for almost 11 hours at a police station near Sandringham before being released under investigation. Officers searched Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, where he was living, and Royal Lodge in Windsor, his former home of some two decades, in a search that ran for six days.

In keeping with UK practice, the force did not name him, referring instead to “a man in his sixties from Norfolk”.

The arrest followed the release by the US Department of Justice of millions of pages of records relating to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Documents in that release appeared to show Mr Mountbatten-Windsor forwarding official material to Epstein, including reports of trade visits to Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Shenzhen written by his then special assistant, and a briefing on investment opportunities in Helmand province, Afghanistan, which he himself described as confidential. Government rules impose a continuing duty of confidentiality on trade envoys.

The same records contained a reference to David Rowland as Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s “trusted money man”.

Assistant Chief Constable Oliver Wright, who is leading the inquiry, said detectives were working through “a significant amount of information” from the public and other sources, and that the force was committed to pursuing all reasonable lines of inquiry. In late May, Thames Valley Police issued a renewed appeal for witnesses, saying it was concerned that potential informants believed the investigation was confined to a single narrow allegation. The force has also said it will consider allegations of sexual misconduct, having contacted the legal representative of a US-based woman who says she was brought to Windsor in 2010.

Asked whether it now has access to the 30,000 emails discussed in the High Court, a spokesperson said the force could not comment on specific material, adding: “We are aware of the allegations circulating in the public domain and encourage anyone with relevant information to get in touch.”

A government spokesperson said departments were cooperating fully with the investigation. King Charles has said only that “the law must take its course”.

Pressure for parliamentary scrutiny

The disclosure has sharpened calls for the Royal Household to face formal oversight.

Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP for York Central, told the BBC that “the system built around the Royal Household has to be reviewed”, warning that “the web grows ever darker and that is why we have got to address the issue of unaccountable power and also the abuse of power in high office”. She has argued for a joint committee of MPs and peers to scrutinise the Household’s operations.

Ailsa Anderson, a former press secretary to Queen Elizabeth II, told the same programme that she did not know how many of the emails referred to Mr Mountbatten-Windsor and that they post-dated her time at the Palace, but described the allegations as sounding “absolutely horrendous” and “another nail in the coffin”. She said the police investigation had to take its course and that the Royal Household had acted promptly.

Andrew Lownie, whose unauthorised biography of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor was published last year, has called for a parliamentary inquiry into the trade envoy years and says Freedom of Information requests continue to be refused. He has been told that files on the role, which was a government appointment rather than a royal one, will not be released until 2065.

That argument moved into Parliament in July. On 14 July, the Green MP Siân Berry presented a Ten Minute Rule Bill to amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000 by removing section 37, the exemption covering the sovereign, the heirs to the throne and communications with the Royal Household. The Bill, supported by MPs including Ms Maskell, David Davis, Jeremy Corbyn and Pete Wishart, would bring the Royal Household, the Royal Archives and the Duchies within the scope of the Act. Bills introduced by that route rarely become law without government backing.

Where the case stands

No charges have been brought, and the police investigation continues. Mr Wright has said updates are unlikely “for some time”.

What the court documents establish is narrow but significant: that a substantial body of correspondence concerning Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s private financial dealings reached the most senior official in the Royal Household in 2020, four months after he stepped back from public duties following his 2019 Newsnight interview, and five years before the allegations became the subject of a criminal inquiry.

What was done with it remains unknown.