Prince Andrew’s disastrous interview with Emily Maitlis led to his withdrawal from royal duties (Image: BBC)
Prince Andrew held a secret meeting with ambassador at the Windsor Royal Lodge just weeks after his disastrous Newsnight interview, newly released court documents have revealed.
In 2019, the right-hand man, Dominic Hampshire, personally arranged for Ambassador Liu Xiaoming to evade waiting paparazzi outside the royal residence and prevent him from being pictured meeting with the embattled Prince. It emerged in court that Hampshire submitted the ambassadorial vehicle’s number plate in advance to bypass security checks and allow him to slip in unnoticed.
The meeting was arranged to discuss Andrew’s royal-themed tech investment scheme, called Pitch@Palace, which had been launched in China the year before with who has been removed from the UK over allegations that he is a spy for the Chinese Communist Party. It was in the court challenge to then Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s decision to bar Yang that these new details have emerged.
But even Chinese officials were cautious about meeting after he had disastrously defended his decades-long friendship with infamous billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, it emerged in court. Yang, who was even admitted that it would be “damaging” for the ambassador to be seen meeting with him.
Liu Xiaoming was China’s Ambassador to the UK from 2011 to 2021 (Image: Getty)
A letter from Yang to Andrew’s top advisor puports that the pair were in communication “directly or indirectly on an almost daily basis for what is now just over five months”. The Chinese national, who was authorised to make deals in China on behalf of the Duke, failed to overturn the decision to ban him from the UK over spying allegations.
But the Special Immigration Appeals Tribunal’s decision also led to the release of hundreds of pages of documents, January 31,shedding new light on Ambassador Xiaoming’s secretive trip to the Royal Lodge in December, while Andrew’s international reputation lay in tatters.
Yang said that Xiaoming “was an early supporter of Pitch and wanted to know what was going on with the Duke and Pitch after the Maitlis interview given there was huge negativity in the Chinese media,” the has reported. It was expected that the CCP official would “report back to China about whether there was still a commitment to continue Pitch in China.”
The alleged Chinese spy told the tribunal: “At the time, there was a 24/7 news presence around the Royal Lodge. Having any ambassador visiting the duke would have been in the news, but particularly a Chinese ambassador.”
Surprisingly, the court heard that, if the meeting was made public, there were fears among Chinese officials that being seen with the Duke could even cause uproar at home as his “reputation in China was so bad at the time.”
But the apparently cash-strapped Prince was keen to make money from Chinese business through his Pitch@Palace investment scheme. Yang said: “The duke needed money at the time, and saw the relationships with Chia [sic] through Pitch as one possible source of funding.”
Andrew was set to receive a portion of all money funnelled through the scheme, taking two per cent off the top of any deal made for three years. Pitch@Palace had been launched in China with a £50,000 injection from Andrew and three other individuals but failed to cash in on the Duke’s royal status.
Ahead of the court documents’ release, Tengbo Yang refuted the spying allegations and said “entrepreneurial success should be encouraged and celebrated, not punished.”