Advice ignored by ministers could have blocked Prince Andrew's spy | Prince Andrew

Ministers failed to follow advice to strengthen security laws that could have stopped a suspected Chinese spy from targeting Prince Andrew, a former attorney general has said.

Dominic Grieve, a former Conservative MP who chaired the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) until 2019, said ministers were asked five years ago to introduce laws to criminalize foreign agents, but that they had failed to do so. Similar laws already exist in the United States and Australia.

We remain without a significant weapon in our arsenal, Grieve said. We asked [this law] in the context of the Russia inquiry report which accused the Government of failing to investigate Russian interference in British politics and, in my view, we badly need that. This reinforces the need to do so.

On December 13, court documents revealed that a businessman accused of being a Chinese spy had become a close confidant of the Duke of York, Prince Andrew. It emerged that Andrew had invited the man to Buckingham Palace.

In 2019, the ISC recommended that ministers make it a criminal offense to act as an agent of a foreign power without disclosing this fact. If Parliament had passed the new law, foreign agents could be arrested.

If you operate in the United States and pretend to be a businessman, but in reality you are in the pay of the Chinese state and you do not disclose it, then you can sue that person for being an undisclosed agent of a foreign power, Grieve told the Observer.

In February 2023, a man, referred to in court documents as H6, was prevented from flying from Beijing to London, and in March 2023 he was banned from flying by then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman. access to the United Kingdom because its presence was not conducive to the public. GOOD.

H6 appealed to the Special Immigration Appeals Board which rejected his application last week. The ruling found that H6 attempted to conceal or downplay its ties to the United Front Work Department, which collects intelligence on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.

A 2023 ISC report said China's intelligence services had collected large amounts of information and targeted people at all levels of politics and public life, particularly those it considered more vulnerable because they had lost their power or influence.

Prince Andrew stepped down from royal duties in November 2019 after a public backlash when he tried to defend his friendship with pedophile Jeffery Epstein in a BBC interview. Newsnight interview. His only income would now be a pension of $20,000 a year from the Royal Navy.

This makes him vulnerable to such approaches, according to author Andrew Lownie, who is writing a biography about Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York.

I fear that several members of the royal family have been compromised by the Chinese, Lownie said. He is not the only one.

Duke of York's affair with suspected Chinese spy comes a month after Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said Britain needed a strong UK-China relationship after meeting Xi Jinping, Chinese President, at the G20 summit.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is due to visit Beijing in January for trade talks, shortly before Donald Trump becomes US president for a second time and is likely to impose tough tariffs on Chinese imports.

Prince Andrew, 64, has been accused of using his position and publicly funded official foreign trips as a cover to make money through private business deals and promote his The Dragon's LairPitch@Palace style event connecting start-ups with investors.

When he was the UK's Special Representative for International Trade and Investment between 2001 and 2011, Andrew took financier David Rowland, with whom he had business dealings, on an official trip and showcased the services of the man business to high-ranking interlocutors.

THE Sunday hours reported that the suspected Chinese spy had also met former prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa Mayon different occasions.

Lownie said he struggled to complete the research for his new book, even though documents detailing who accompanied Andrew on official trips, for example, would have to be made available after 20 years under the Protection Act. public records.

He said: For too long, royal finances have been shrouded in secrecy. It is clear from the various scandals surrounding not only Andrew, but also other members of the royal family, that they cannot be trusted to police their own.

It is time that the exemptions granted to them in the Freedom of Information Act were removed, royal wills were made public and a register of royal interests established.

We also need some sort of investigation into Andrews' decade as a special rep, his use of Pitch@Palace, and exactly how he afforded his luxurious lifestyle over the 20 recent years if we want confidence in the monarchy to continue.

On Friday, Andrew said he stopped all contact with the businessman when concerns were raised about him. A statement from his office said Andrew met with the individual through official channels, without anything sensitive ever being discussed.