Prince Andrew sets up firm with disgraced financier
The Duke of York has gone into business with a former Coutts banker who quit in disgrace over allegations of sexual harassment.
The Duke of York has gone into business with a former Coutts banker who quit in disgrace over allegations of sexual harassment.
Prince Andrew has set up a company with Harry Keogh, who left the Queen’s bank in March 2018 after he was accused of touching a female colleague inappropriately and boasting about his sexual exploits.
The prince has previously faced questions over his close links to Jeffrey Epstein, the late billionaire financier accused of numerous sexual offences.
The new venture, which The Times understands will be a vehicle for Andrew’s family investments, is named Lincelles after the 18th-century battle against the French in which the British were commanded by the Duke of York.
It has been structured as an unlimited company, which means that it is not required to file accounts with Companies House and can avoid disclosing its profits or income. The duke controls 75 per cent of the business through the Urramoor Trust, with Keogh listed as a fellow controller.
A source close to Prince Andrew defended Keogh yesterday as a “friend and adviser to the duke”. The source described him as “the duke’s private banker for some 20 years”.
At Coutts he was accused of touching a woman’s groin while demonstrating the site of an injury. His behaviour was said to be so toxic that some female staff refused to work with him. The private bank carried out an investigation in 2015 and the chief executive recommended he leave, according to The Wall Street Journal. It was decided that he should stay, but he was disciplined and eventually resigned in March 2018.
A friend of Keogh told the The Wall Street Journal that he denied the allegations and it was reported that he had sued the bank for unfair dismissal. On Friday Keogh said a non-disclosure agreement with the bank meant he was unable to comment on the allegations.
The source close to the duke said the allegations against Keogh “don’t appear to have been subject to any investigation by law enforcement or independent third parties and nor have they been tested by due process in a court of law”.
In October 2018 Keogh was a guest at the wedding of Andrew’s daughter Princess Eugenie.
Lincelles was formed in June last year, seven months after the duke’s BBC interview about his links to Epstein, who committed suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for a number of sexual offences.
The duke has been accused of having sex with Virginia Giuffre when she was 17 at the house of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British heiress accused of trafficking girls for Epstein. He has strenuously denied the allegations.
Lincelles’s other controller is Charles Douglas, a commercial lawyer specialising in advising offshore funds and high net worth individuals.
Its sole director is Dominic Hampshire, the secretary of the Quad-Centenary Club, which was set up to raise funds for the Royal Blackheath Golf Club in London and which counts the duke as its chairman. Hampshire, who describes himself as a golf professional on Companies House filings, was also involved in The Duke of York Young Champions Trophy, a golf tournament for under-18s, which was axed after the Epstein scandal.
A spokesman for Prince Andrew said: “The Duke of York’s private office established the Urramoor Trust, which owns both Lincelles Unlimited and Urramoor Limited, a private limited company, which files public accounts.
“The trust, of which the Duke of York is settlor but not a beneficiary, has independent trustees. The duke is not an owner of either Lincelles or Urramoor Limited as a matter of fact and law. Lincelles Unlimited has never been operational, has not received any funds or paid any moneys out.”
It is understood the trust was established to support the duke’s family, and the unlimited status was chosen for Lincelles to afford a degree of privacy.
In 2019 The Daily Telegraph reported that Andrew had set up Urramoor Ltd, “under an assumed name to channel deals brokered in Buckingham Palace”. He used the pseudonym Andrew Inverness having been given the title Earl of Inverness by the Queen when he married Sarah Ferguson in 1986.
He joins David Cameron, the former prime minister embroiled in a lobbying scandal, and Andrew Mills, a former government adviser who brokered a bungled pounds 250 million PPE deal, in controlling unlimited companies.
Cameron converted his company to unlimited status a fortnight ago and Mills converted his personal consultancy to unlimited status last October.
There is no suggestion that these companies were set up in breach of any rules, or used for anything but legal purposes. Lincelles’s controllers have been approached for comment.
The Times
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