Buckingham Palace was made aware of emails allegedly showing that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor shared confidential information with a business contact six years ago, according to court documents.
A tranche of emails during the former prince’s time as a British trade envoy was sent to the Royal Household in 2020.
Documents filed in the High Court show that “material (which includes the archive)” of up to 30,000 emails relating to one of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s business associates was sent to the Lord Chamberlain, the palace’s most senior officer.
They are understood to have included messages Mr Mountbatten-Windsor forwarded to Jonathan Rowland, his close friend and the former chief executive of Banque Havilland, during his time as a trade envoy.
A briefing note about Iceland and its financial crisis, drawn from an internal government memo, is reported to be among them.
The Iceland emails were obtained by The Telegraph in February and published in an article showing how Mr Mountbatten-Windsor “forwarded a confidential Treasury briefing to a banker friend while he was trade envoy”.
The BBC now reports that the exchange was among a “large cache of emails relating to Mountbatten-Windsor’s finances”.
They are part of a 30,000-email tranche from the account of Mr Rowland, dating to before June 2013, that is mentioned in court papers from 2021 and 2022.
Lord Chamberlain had a copy
The High Court papers detail a dispute between Mr Rowland and his father, David, both the claimants, and retail entrepreneur Kevin Stanford, the defendant, who came to be in possession of the emails from Mr Rowland’s account.
They are said to have originally been obtained illegally by a business associate of Mr Rowland’s in 2013.
Mr Stanford was later found to have breached orders to investigate the email archive and how it came to be in his possession.
A High Court judgment dated June 13, 2022, states: “In an email … dated 10 July 2020, Mr Stanford referred to having delivered to Buckingham Palace ‘material (which includes the archive)’ …”.
A second paper, a High Court judgement in April 2021, states: “Mr Stanford’s emails also make it clear that he provided a copy of the archive to the Lord Chamberlain in May 2020.”
“The archive” refers to an electronic file of “up to 30,000 emails generated over a decade or more” in an account belonging to Mr Rowland, including business-related communications and personal messages.
Mr Mountbatten-Windsor is known to have been in regular contact with Mr Rowland.
‘Ongoing police enquiry’
When asked about the emails by the BBC, Buckingham Palace said: “Since there is an ongoing police enquiry concerning Mr Mountbatten-Windsor, it is not possible to provide any comment on these matters.”
Mr Mountbatten-Windsor is facing questions about the extent to which he may have leaked sensitive information to his friends and contacts during his time as trade envoy, a post he held from 2001 to 2011.
He was arrested on his 66th birthday at Wood Farm on the Sandringham Estate on Feb 19, and is being investigated over accusations of misconduct in public office.
Thames Valley Police has now widened the investigation to also assess claims of sexual misconduct.
Paperwork released as part of the Epstein files appeared to show Mr Mountbatten-Windsor forwarding official reports about trips to Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam and China in November 2010.
Jonathan and David Rowland worked with Mr Mountbatten-Windsor during his time as a trade envoy and had travelled with him.
Mr Rowland has previously said he “never had any contact or correspondence or had dinner or met with” Epstein.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk ’
