bitchy | The police inquiry into ex-Prince Andrew will ‘widen’ beyond misconduct

Yesterday was the one-month anniversary of Prince Andrew’s arrest. Andrew was arrested in his temporary home, Wood Farm, on the Sandringham estate. It was his 66th birthday. The Thames Valley Police kept Andrew in custody for around eleven hours while they searched Wood Farm and Royal Lodge. The RL search lasted several days. The reason for the arrest was “suspicion of misconduct in public office,” meaning Andrew’s quid pro quo schemes when he was Britain’s trade envoy. He was passing along classified documents to Jeffrey Epstein in exchange for money and trafficked women and girls. Well, on the one-month anniversary of his arrest, the Times reported that the police inquiry is expanding.

The police inquiry into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is likely to widen beyond the offence of misconduct in public office, The Times has learnt. Andrew is set to be investigated over other potential corruption offences on top of a scoping inquiry into alleged sex trafficking, police sources said.

He was arrested last month on suspicion of misconduct in public office (Mipo) relating to his time as a government trade envoy, when he allegedly passed confidential information to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. But detectives at Thames Valley police are understood to be widening their investigation beyond the single offence, for which it can be difficult to mount a prosecution, to ensure all bases are covered. Andrew has denied all wrongdoing.

A police source said: “The legal bar for Mipo is high. There was always an issue over whether he was actually a public official at the time, whether he actually signed any papers. It’s not surprising that they are having to look at broader offences.”

Andrew has been dogged for more than 15 years over allegations about his relationship with Epstein, who died in a New York prison cell in 2019. Andrew’s arrest at Sandringham on his 66th birthday plunged the monarchy into a constitutional crisis. Any further police interviews are expected to be by appointment, and any charging decisions are expected to take the best part of a year.

According to emails in the Epstein files, a massive cache of information released by the US Department of Justice, Andrew appeared to have forwarded official reports of trips to Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam in 2010 and 2011. Lord Mandelson is also being investigated by the Metropolitan Police over the same offence of misconduct in public office, which carries a maximum life term, over alleged leaks to Epstein while he was senior in Tony Blair’s government.

Sir Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, has visited Washington to try to press the US authorities to expedite the release of unredacted exchanges in the files, and revealed Mandelson is under investigation over an email he sent about a €500 billion bailout of the eurozone while he was serving as business secretary.

[From The Times]

Again, I’m no expert in British laws or British prosecutions, but from what I’m seeing, it looks like the authorities will have a much more straightforward misconduct case against Peter Mandelson. The investigation into Andrew was always going to be expanded because his criminality was never limited to passing along classified information. Andrew’s “misconduct” is (intimately) connected to sexual predation, sex trafficking, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. It sounds like the police are still investigating the misconduct in public office issue, they’re just trying to prove the misconduct through the document trail via the Epstein Files and the trafficking operation. When really, the trafficking operation is the bigger crime.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.