Prince Andrew used trade post to help rich financier David Rowland

Prince Andrew exploited his taxpayer-funded position to lobby for his business partner.

Prince Andrew had already been sidelined from official royal duties in the wake of the Epstein scandal. Picture: AFP

Prince Andrew exploited his royal status and taxpayer-funded position as a British trade envoy to lobby for a rich financier who was also his business partner, explosive new documents show.

In bombshell email revelations that have shocked the royal family, the prince promoted a private Luxembourg bank on trade missions and was a co-owner of a business with the bank’s owner, David Rowland, in a Virgin Islands tax haven.

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There are now calls for a public inquiry into Andrew’s activities, with one Tory MP saying he was “a million miles away’’ from separating his personal and business life.

The Mail on Sunday newspaper has obtained and published The Prince Andrew Papers, a ­series of emails showing how the scandal-riddled prince blurred the lines between royal, official and private business.

David Rowland, then Luxembourg finance minister Luc Frieden, Jonathan Rowland and Prince Andrew in 2009 at the opening of Banque Havilland.

He appears to have used official duties to plug Mr Rowland’s ­Luxembourg bank while being in a business with the financier himself.

The emails show that Andrew was also considering taking a fin­ancial stake in the bank he was ­secretly promoting.

Andrew’s moves to try to line his own pockets on taxpayers’ time and money has infuriated a public that is already distrustful of the Queen’s second son over his friendship with American financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The fallout from his car-crash interview about his Epstein relationship will continue this week when a BBC conversation with Epstein’s alleged former sex slave Virginia Roberts Giuffre airs on Monday night in Britain.

Ms Giuffre said she was trafficked to Andrew on three ­occasions, claims that Andrew has denied.

The prince has already been sidelined from official royal duties in the wake of the Epstein scandal but the publication of the financial emails adds to a push from Prince Charles and Prince William for Andrew to be permanently retired.

The royals are supposed to keep their public and private lives separate, but The Mail on Sunday shows there were astonishing conflicts of interest.

The paper says Andrew would shoehorn Mr Rowland and his son Jonathan into official trade tours “so they could expand their (Luxembourg) bank and woo powerful and wealthy clients’’.

At the time, Andrew was a 40 per cent owner of Inverness Asset Management with the Rowlands in the British Virgin Islands.

The company existed until March this year. The paper says the emails show that the tax-haven business was to lure the prince’s wealthy royal contacts to invest in a separate tax-free offshore fund.

One email exchange referred to Andrew facing the sack as trade envoy because of the Epstein scandal. Jonathan Rowland suggested their commercial activities could continue “under the radar”.

Andrew responded: “I like your thinking.”

The prince stood down as trade envoy in 2011, not only because of the Epstein scandal but also because of a questionable personal deal he brokered with the Kazakh regime.

He has been friends with David Rowland, 74, since at least 2005 when he stayed with the property tycoon on his Guernsey property. Mr Rowland also helped pay off the huge debts of Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson.

Mr Rowland bought the Luxembourg bank in the fallout of the Icelandic bank collapse, called it Banque Havilland and offered private banking for billionaires.

The ongoing role of Andrew’s former private secretary and chief executive of his Pitch@Palace scheme, Amanda Thirsk, is under pressure after the documents showed she passed to the Rowlands a Foreign Office diplomatic cable containing details of Andrew’s one-to-one conversations with senior Chinese politicians.

On that China trip, Andrew allowed Jonathan Rowland to accompany the mission to meet Louis Cheung, the president of Ping An, the world’s largest insurance company. Mr Rowland proposed to Mr Cheung that they could become business partners.

Nigel Mills, a Tory member of the public accounts committee before the election was called, told The Mail on Sunday: “(Andrew) clearly was never fit to hold that ­office. Anyone in public life knows these rules about separating your own interests from those of the job you are doing. What he is doing here isn’t even close to the line — it’s a million miles over it.”

The paper says that on another occasion, Andrew demanded a private briefing memo from British Treasury chiefs about the ­Icelandic financial crisis, then passed that information on to the Rowlands.