Timeline of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s scandals as royal arrested on his birthday amid Epstein allegations

Widely purported to have been the late Queen’s “favourite” child, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has suffered a sharp fall from grace over the past decade.

Plagued by a string of controversies, the latest blow has seen him arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office following allegations he shared sensitive information with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein while serving as the UK’s trade envoy.

Thames Valley Police confirmed the arrest on Thursday following claims made against the former prince after the release of millions of pages of files related to Epstein, which included messages between the two sent months after Mr Mountbatten-Windsor claimed to have ended his friendship with the convicted sex offender.

The arrest comes as pictures circulated online appearing to show unmarked police cars attending Wood Farm on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, with plain-clothed officers gathering outside Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s home on his 66th birthday.

Thames Valley Police previously said the force was also reviewing allegations that a woman was trafficked to the UK by Jeffrey Epstein to have a sexual encounter with Mr Mountbatten-Windsor. The King’s brother has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

Emails between Mr Mountbatten-Windsor and Epstein reportedly show that he and Epstein were still exchanging messages until at least late February 2011, when the duke wrote: “Keep in close touch, and we’ll play some more soon.”

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As a result, he was stripped of his remaining royal titles in October and was forced to leave his Windsor home, Royal Lodge, to relocate to a smaller privately funded address in Sandringham.

With the release of the so-called Epstein files and Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, his relationship with the financier, who took his own life in 2019, has increasingly made its way into the headlines.

In her book, Giuffre claims that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor considered it his “birthright” to sleep with her when she was 17 years old. While recognising that Giuffre may well be a victim of abuse by Epstein, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor has always denied her allegations against him.

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s ties to the convicted paedophile eventually forced him to step down from his royal duties, and in January 2022, he was stripped of his royal patronages.

In the years since, he has faced a number of other scandals, including a “close confidante” of his being banned from the UK over allegations he was a Chinese spy.

Here, The Independent takes a look at a timeline of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s fall from grace and his retreat from the public eye.

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The Queen stood by Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s side even when he was caught up in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal in 2019 and “stepped back from royal duties for the foreseeable future”.

In October 2021, it was claimed that the monarch intended to spend millions of pounds privately funding her son’s defence against allegations of sexual abuse made by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre.

She also signalled her support for her disgraced son by arriving alongside him for Prince Philip’s memorial service in March 2021.

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor provided a steady arm for the Queen as she walked into Westminster Abbey to remember the life of her husband, just a few weeks after he reached a multimillion-pound out-of-court settlement with Giuffre.

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During his 2019 interview with BBC Newsnight, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor said he had known British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of media magnate and former MP Robert Maxwell, since she was at university.

She introduced Mr Mountbatten-Windsor to her then-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein in 1999. The trio enjoyed a close friendship, even after Epstein was convicted of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute in 2008.

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor is alleged to have personally invited the couple to Balmoral, the Queen’s Scottish residence, in 1999.

Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022 following a New York sex-trafficking trial for procuring teen girls for Epstein to abuse.

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Mr Mountbatten-Windsor continued to visit Epstein in New York after the financier’s conviction for child sex offences in 2008.

Epstein received an 18-month sentence but was allowed to go on “work release” to his office most days and was released on probation after 13 months.

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor faced criticism when pictures emerged which showed him opening the door of Epstein’s palatial East Side townhouse in December 2010 and the pair strolling through Central Park.

In the now-infamous 2019 BBC Newsnight interview, the royal claimed he had cut contact with Epstein in December 2010.

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In 2019, Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, formerly known as Virginia Roberts, filed a lawsuit in Manhattan alleging she was trafficked by Epstein to have sex with Mr Mountbatten-Windsor on three occasions when she was 17 and a minor under US law.

Giuffre has accused Mr Mountbatten-Windsor of sexually abusing her on Epstein’s private island, Little St James, as a teenager, which the former prince “unequivocally” denied.

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Mr Mountbatten-Windsor was criticised for a car crash BBC Newsnight interview that aired on 16 November 2019.

During the interview, he denied he slept with Giuffre, saying an encounter could not have taken place because he was at a branch of Pizza Express in Woking with his daughter Princess Beatrice.

He also said Giuffre’s claim he was sweaty at a nightclub was untrue because an “overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands war” had left him unable to sweat.

The royal faced a public backlash, with equality campaigners claiming he was “too stupid to even pretend concern for Epstein’s victims”.

Four days later, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor announced the Queen had given him permission to step back from public duties in the wake of the interview.

He said it had become clear to him in recent days that his association with Epstein had become a “major distraction” to the royal family’s work.

The royal said he regretted his association with Epstein and “deeply sympathises” with his victims.

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In January 2022, the Queen stripped Mr Mountbatten-Windsor of his military titles and royal patronages in the wake of a US judge allowing Giuffre’s civil sexual abuse case against her son to move to trial.

The former prince stopped using his HRH (His Royal Highness) style his roles – including Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, one of the oldest regiments in the British army – were handed to other members of the royal family.

His other military titles included honorary air commodore of RAF Lossiemouth; colonel-in-chief of the Royal Irish Regiment; colonel-in-chief of the Small Arms School Corps; commodore-in-chief of the Fleet Air Arm; royal colonel of the Royal Highland Fusiliers; deputy colonel-in-chief of The Royal Lancers (Queen Elizabeth’s Own); and royal colonel of the Royal Regiment of Scotland.

In March 2022, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor paid Giuffre a multi-million-pound out-of-court settlement, meaning both sides avoided the case going to trial.

As part of the agreement, he was due to pay damages to Giuffre and a donation to a charity “in support of victims’ rights”.

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor has faced calls to confirm how he funded settlement – which is reported to be as much as £12m – and whether the Queen or even King Charles, then Prince of Wales, contributed to the sum.

In December 2024, it emerged that a “close confidante” of the royal had been barred from entering the UK because authorities felt he was likely to pose a threat to national security.

Yang Tengbo brought a case to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) after the then-home secretary Suella Braverman said he should be excluded from the UK in March 2023.

British authorities allege the businessman was working on behalf of the United Front Work Department, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party that is used to influence foreign entities.

He is said to have twice visited the royal residence at the invitation of the King’s younger brother and was described as a “close confidante” of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor.

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor insists he “ceased all contact” with the businessman accused of being a Chinese spy when concerns were first raised about him. He met the individual through “official channels” and “nothing of a sensitive nature was ever discussed”, a statement from his office said.

Newly surfaced messages revealed the Duke of York remained in contact with Epstein until February 2011 – despite having claimed to have cut him off in December 2010.

Emails between Mr Mountbatten-Windsor and Epstein reportedly show they were still exchanging messages until at least late February 2011, when the duke wrote: “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon.”

Messages were exchanged between the pair on the same day a photograph of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor with 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell – who is currently behind bars for recruiting and trafficking underage girls for Epstein – was published, Bloomberg reports.

The emails were obtained by Bloomberg after being disclosed in a filing by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), defending an appeal by former Barclays boss, Jes Staley, who is challenging its decision to ban him from the finance industry for misleading regulators on his ties to Epstein.

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Mr Mountbatten-Windsor is forced to relinquish all his titles, including the Duke of York and Knight of the Garter as his former friendship with Epstein threatens to overshadow the work of the royal family.

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor has given up his title as Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order and his Garter role as a Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.

He released a statement saying that he, the King, and his family “have concluded the continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the royal family”.

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He continued: “I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first. I stand by my decision five years ago to stand back from public life”.

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s former wife, Sarah Ferguson, will also no longer be known as the Duchess of York. Their daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, will be unaffected.

The news came after the publication of extracts of the posthumous memoir of Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre. In the book, Giuffre claimed that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor considered it his “birthright” to sleep with her.

In his statement, issued on 17 October, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor repeated that “I vigorously deny the accusations against me”.

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Mr Mountbatten-Windsor was pictured in a set of images released from the Epstein estate released by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. They also included images of US President Donald Trump, and Steve Bannon. It’s not clear when the photos were taken, as they are undated. No captions or context have been provided for any of the images.

Of the 19 photos shared by the Democrats, there is only one photo of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor where he stands with Microsoft magnate and philanthropist Bill Gates during the Malaria Summit in London in 2018.

Epstein is not featured in the image, which appears to be a cropped version of a professionally taken-photograph, which excludes the then-Prince Charles, who was also in frame. It remains unclear why the photo was part of Epstein's estate. Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s appearance in the photo is not an indication of wrongdoing.

More personal photos saw Epstein with director Woody Allen and Virgin magnate Sir Richard Branson. Sir Richard and many other people photographed with Epstein have denied any wrongdoing in their association with the disgraced financier.

On his 66th birthday, the former prince was arrested by Thames Valley Police officers at his new home in Sandringham, on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

The force previously said it was reviewing allegations that a woman was trafficked to the UK by Jeffrey Epstein to have a sexual encounter with Mr Mountbatten-Windsor, as well as claims he shared sensitive information with the paedophile while serving as the UK’s trade envoy.

Searches are being carried out at addresses in Berkshire and Norfolk, the force said.

Assistant Chief Constable Oliver Wright said: “Following a thorough assessment, we have now opened an investigation into this allegation of misconduct in public office.

“It is important that we protect the integrity and objectivity of our investigation as we work with our partners to investigate this alleged offence.

“We understand the significant public interest in this case, and we will provide updates at the appropriate time.”