Judging from British dramas, I’m always left with the impression that London is chock full of all kinds of spies. I’m sure that’s true of New York and DC, and I’m sure both America and the UK have all kinds of glaring espionage loopholes which are mercilessly exploited by foreign actors. I’m still convinced that Donald Trump was fully handing off highly classified documents and secrets out of Mar-a-Lago’s tackiest bathrooms, you know? But I digress. Apparently, there was a Chinese spy operating in England, and he befriended Prince Andrew. The (alleged) Chinese spy was so close to Andrew, the spy was invited to Andrew’s 2020 birthday party AND Andrew authorized this guy to “do business” on Andrew’s behalf in Asia. It’s all coming out now:

A “close confidant” of the Duke of York is an alleged Chinese spy who has been banned from entering the UK on national security grounds. The man, known only as H6, was once a junior civil servant in China and was so close to Prince Andrew that he had been told he could act on the royal’s behalf when dealing with potential investors in China, according to a secret hearing. He was also invited to the Duke’s birthday party in 2020, and was described by the judges overseeing the case as a “close confidant of the Duke”.

However, the Home Office decided to exclude H6, aged 50, from the UK in July 2023 after MI5 deemed him to be an agent who had engaged in “covert and deceptive activity” on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that he posed a threat to national security. A letter from a senior adviser to the Duke was found on H6’s phone, stating that he was authorised to act on behalf of the royal in engagements with potential partners and investors in China.

H6 challenged this, but a special immigration commission has now ruled that Suella Braverman, the home secretary at the time, was justified in her decision to ban him from the UK. In their 53-page ruling, the judges said that the Duke could have been made “vulnerable” to the misuse of H6’s influence.

In a ruling on Thursday, Mr Justice Bourne, Judge Stephen Smith and Sir Stewart Eldon said: “The secretary of state was entitled to conclude that the applicant represented a risk to the national security of the United Kingdom, and that she was entitled to conclude that his exclusion was justified and proportionate.”

The SIAC hearing was told that the contents of the businessman’s mobile telephone was downloaded when he was stopped under counter-terrorism laws at a UK border in 2021. The mobile’s contents revealed that the Duke authorised the man to set up an international financial initiative known as the Eurasia Fund to engage with potential partners and investors in China. The phone contained a March 2021 letter from Dominic Hampshire, a senior adviser to the Duke, confirming the businessman could act on behalf of the royal in engagements with potential partners and investors in China.

The letter states: “I also hope that it is clear to you where you sit with my principal and indeed his family. You should never underestimate the strength of that relationship … outside of his closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on.” It added that after a meeting with the Duke they had “wisely navigated our way around former private secretaries and we have found a way to carefully remove those people who we don’t completely trust… Under your guidance, we found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house in Windsor.”

The immigration judges were told that in a briefing for the home secretary in July 2023, officials claimed H6 had been in a position to generate relationships between prominent UK figures and senior Chinese officials “that could be leveraged for political interference purposes”.

[From The Telegraph]

This reads, to me, like Andrew has been constantly in need of money for decades and he’s willing to leverage whatever “influence” he has to openly sell access to himself and his family to whoever is willing to pay. The problem is that even China understands that Andrew is not any kind of golden goose when it comes to influence, intelligence or power. I hope the PRC enjoyed hearing Andrew yammer on and on about his sweat glands or his ponies. Like, I understand the severity of this and of course it looks (and actually IS) incredibly bad for Andrew. But also – lol, the Chinese spy had to go to his bosses and admit that his big asset within the British royal family is just this human-trafficking loser and buffoon.

This is probably the most concerning part for the Windsors: “Under your guidance, we found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house in Windsor.” As in, the Chinese spy was advising Andrew on how to get people in and out of the establishment undetected? Hm.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.