A three-judge panel in Britain denied an appeal by a Chinese businessman with close links to Prince Andrew against being banned from entering Britain on national security grounds. File Photo by Hugo Philpott/UPI | License Photo
A Chinese businessman with close links to Prince Andrew, Duke of York, has lost his appeal against being banned from entering Britain on national security grounds.
A three-judge panel of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission on Thursday dismissed the application to overturn the 2023 exclusion order imposed by then Home Secretary Suella Braverman on the 50-year-old man identified only as “H6.” Advertisement
The commission heard the businessman, who divided his time between China and Britain since being granted the equivalent of a Green Card in 2013, was believed to be associated with a shadowy arm of the Chinese Communist Party known as the United Front Work Department that MI5 said was involved in “mounting patient, well-funded, deceptive campaigns to buy and exert influence.”
The link to Prince Andrew was first discovered when H6 was the subject of a “port stop” in November 2021 under the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act, during which his digital devices were searched and copies of the data stored on them were retained. Advertisement
Included, was a March 2020 letter from senior adviser to the prince, Dominic Hampshire, confirming that H6 could act on behalf of the Duke in dealings with potential partners and investors in China.
The letter referred to the honor of H6 being invited to Andrew’s 60th birthday the previous month adding, “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”.
The letter also stated since the first meeting of the trio [H6, the prince and Hampshire] “we have 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 away to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house in Windsor,” it said.
The Home Office said in a submission to the appeal hearing that this showed H6 was in a position to “generate relationships between senior Chinese officials and prominent U.K. figures which could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the Chinese State.” Advertisement
The applicant [H6] had, it claimed, not provided a full and open account of his relationship with the duke, which had a “covert and clandestine” element.
On Feb. 16 last year, H6 was “off-boarded” from a flight from Beijing to London and told that Braverman was in the process of deciding whether to exclude him from Britain, a decision she went ahead and made a month later.
H6 appealed on the grounds the decision was unlawful and that the procedure had been unfair.
However, the appeal heard that in a June 1, 2023, witness statement, H6 “downplayed relationship with the Duke and with the UFWD which, combined with his relationship with the Duke, represented a threat to national security.”
Prince Andrew spent two decades acting as an unofficial international ambassador for British business, helping firms win export deals and contracts around the world until he resigned as a working member of the Royal Family in 2020 over his relationship with the disgraced U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The late Queen Elizabeth stripped the former Royal Navy pilot of his military titles and royal charitable patronages in January 2022, prior to settling a U.S. sexual assault civil suit out of court. Advertisement
The judges were told that H6 had, at times, purposely obscured his links with the Chinese State, the CCP and the UFWD but that the evidence proved otherwise.
Another document found during the search of his devices contained questions posed by the Chinese Embassy in London regarding strategy, a letter addressed to the Beijing UFWD, and a list of people traveling in a delegation including a UFWD member and members with job titles listed as both UFWD and the Beijing Overseas Friendship Association.
Investigators also recovered a text message from H6 introducing himself as an overseas representative of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body that is central to the CCP’s United Front system.
The home secretary’s submission noted that while he denied receiving orders from UFWD to interfere with U.K. interests, it was assessed that those in his position understood UFWD and CCP objectives and proactively advanced them without necessarily being explicitly instructed.
It was judged that given his failure to fully disclose his UFWD links to his U.K. contacts, there existed a “deceptive element” to his activity.
Of particular concern was his honorary admission to an exclusive so-called “48 Group Club” of prominent U.K. figures who the Home Office feared could be exploited for political interference purposes by the Chinese State. Advertisement
