EXCLUSIVE: Andrew Mountbatten Windsor carried out the visit in October 2010.
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor had several Asian prostitutes brought up to his hotel during a taxpayer trip to Hong Kong in 2010, the disgraced royal’s unofficial biographer claims. The former Duke of York visited Hong Kong in 2010 in his capacity as the UK’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment (UKTI), a position he held between October 2001 and July 2011.
Speaking to the Daily Expresso, royal biographer Andrew Lownie quoted a source who was involved with the trip and said, “I was told about him taking the top floor of a hotel in Hong Kong on a trip for business, where he just had all these Asian prostitutes brought in.”
Prostitution in Hong Kong is legal, but organised prostitution is illegal. There are several laws against keeping a vice establishment or procuring someone to be a prostitute, living on the prostitution of others, or public solicitation.
Andrew pictured in 2010 (Image: Getty)
Andrew was in Beijing from September 6 to 11, 2010, and carried out engagements at the Shanghai World Expo and viewed ballet performances in his former role as patron of the English National Ballet. Listings in the Court Circular further confirm that he travelled to Hong Kong the following month.
After carrying out work connected to UKTI in Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia, Andrew arrived in Hong Kong on October 17, 2010.
While details of where he stayed would not be confirmed by the Department of Business and Trade upon request, Andrew’s four-day trip saw him carry out numerous engagements in the region.
These included a visit to China Merchants Bank, a dinner held by conglomerate organisation, Jardine Matheson, which is owned by the Keswick family, a business dynasty with links to the Far East region, a meeting with the Chief Executive of the HSBC Group and several business meetings at both the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
Andrew returned to London on October 20, 2010, according to the Court Circular.
Before he arrived in Hong Kong, Andrew was pictured in Vietnam (Image: Getty)
Government documents confirm that in 2010 Andrew undertook overseas UKTI visits to Davos, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Dubai and China.
Details of where the funding for UKTI visits comes from have often been the subject of discussion. In some cases, the UKTI would pay for accommodation and in-country expenses, while other costs, such as private travel, were billed to the UK taxpayer.
According to David McClure, an investigator into royal finances, Andrew’s most expensive flights were the year after Lownie’s claims, when he once again travelled to China, Hong Kong and Malaysia in October 2011 for a total cost of £92,237.
Mr McClure examined the wealth of the Royal Family in his 2014 book, Royal Legacy, and worked out that the estimated total costs of Andrew’s flights and accommodation during the ten years he spent as the UK’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment were around £4million.
Andrew (pictured in 2010) visited Hong Kong in 2010 (Image: Getty)
Andrew previously carried out official visits to Hong Kong in 1996 and 2006. He first attended the British Army Handover ceremony and returned ten years later for another four-day visit to promote trade and investment links.
Reports of Andrew hiring prostitutes are not new, as Lownie previously alleged that during a 2006 stay in Thailand, he had 40 women brought up to his hotel in the space of four days.
It also emerged in 2022 that Andrew had several unnamed women visiting Buckingham Palace on a regular basis and would refuse to disclose their names to royal security officials – a major concern from a security perspective.
The claims came from former royal protection officer, Paul Page, who worked at Buckingham Palace for six years and were also made in the book, For Queen and Currency, and in his defence case statement back in 2008.
Andrew (pictured in 2001) was Trade Envoy for 10 years, until 2011 (Image: Getty)
He claimed the prince called a guard a “fat lardy-ass c***” when a woman was stopped from coming up to his apartment.
“We used to have a joke that he should have a revolving door in his bedroom,” Page said in the documentary, Prince Andrew: BANISHED. “The amount of women going in and out of there, it was just literally every other day someone would be coming in to see him… a different one every time.”
Describing the King’s younger brother as “addicted to porn and to sex”, Mr Lownie, who wrote Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, told the Expresso, “He is addicted to porn and to sex. There’s a story that Tina Brown [Vanity Fair and Tatler’s former Editor] says of him staying at the home of Walter Annenberg, who’s a former US Ambassador in London, and he spent the whole time just looking at porn.”
Andrew pictured the month before Lownie’s claims in Shanghai (Image: Getty)
Andrew’s connections to China are well-documented, with it surfacing last year that the former Duke had an “unusual degree of trust” with alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo.
The High Court heard he was invited to the prince’s birthday party in 2020, and he was told he could act on the prince’s behalf when dealing with potential investors in China.
Mr Tengbo, who has denied all wrongdoing, was banned from the UK after he was allegedly involved in an “elite capture” operation aimed at influencing high-profile individuals.
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission upheld the Home Office ban on Mr Tengbo, concluding he was a threat to national security. Andrew’s office released a statement at the time saying he had cut ties with the alleged spy, following “advice” from officials. They added that the former prince and Mr Tengbo had never discussed anything of a “sensitive nature”.
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor was approached for comment.
