A former royal protection officer who spoke out about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor bringing women to Buckingham Palace says he has been “told to keep quiet” by the Metropolitan Police.
Paul Page, who has said that police were not allowed to record the names of Andrew’s female guests on official logs, received a warning letter reminding him of his obligations of “confidentiality and respect for the privacy of those who are protected”.
The letter from Jon Savell, a deputy assistant commissioner who leads the Met’s security and protection command, was headed with the counterterrorism policing logo.
“It’s trying to say, in the nicest possible terms, ‘can you shut up?’,” Page said.
It is understood that Met officials see the the letter as a request to provide information to them, rather than a silencing technique.
The letter was sent in December after Page said that Andrew had brought unidentified women into his private apartment at the palace.
On Friday, after mounting pressure and a series of revelations following the release of files related to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, the Met said it was contacting Andrew’s former and serving protection officers asking for any relevant information.
Page, who worked as a royal protection officer from 1998 to 2004, has made claims about Andrew since 2008 when he was charged over a £3 million investment scam linked to a spread betting syndicate he ran from a locker room in Buckingham Palace.
Page, who was sentenced to six years in prison in July 2009, alleged that a culture of gambling, moonlighting and drinking existed in the royal protection squad at the time.
Page was jailed for fraud in 2009
Police and prosecutors tried to strike out sensitive parts of Page’s defence statement, in which he claimed widespread professional misconduct in the squad, but The Times took the issue to the Court of Appeal and won the right to report the allegations in December 2008.
The statement referred to a series of alleged security breaches at Buckingham Palace involving Andrew between 1997 and 2003. It referred to a number of women the former prince privately entertained.
The only guest he named was Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite now serving a 20-year sentence in the US for trafficking teenage girls for Epstein to abuse.
Page alleged that women would visit the prince at all times of the day without going through proper security protocols. Protection officers were then ordered to abandon their posts and drive some guests home, and those who dared to raise objections were verbally abused, he said.
The Metropolitan Police has never fully investigated his claims and the prosecution said that they were made to discredit his former colleagues, who gave evidence against Page. The force said his fraud conviction showed he was unreliable.
Page has maintained his account for nearly 20 years. Last week he told The Sun: “We were told to call footmen and then either the female would walk through unescorted or the footman would come down to collect her and walk her to Andrew. We weren’t allowed to know the names.”
Page has claimed there were numerous security breaches at Buckingham Palace from 1997 to 2003
VUK VALCIC/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET/GETTY IMAGES
Page defended the royal protection command, saying they were mistreated by Andrew, had to focus on their job of protecting him and were not responsible for his actions towards women and wider issues.
He said: “They’re not his friend and he’s not their friend, that’s the first thing. He was rude, called us ‘f***ing imbeciles’. So officers see a couple of women at a party, they’re not going to go, ‘oh, they’re trafficked women’. How would they know, realistically? These were good officers with exemplary records.”
Page faced charges after running a multimillion-pound spread betting syndicate, known as the Currency Club, involving dozens of royal protection officers. When it collapsed in 2007, with losses of more than £1 million, he set up the investment scam to try to keep it afloat. Former colleagues, who lost up to £150,000, gave evidence against him.
Page questioned why the Met sent him a warning letter in December when “I’ve been saying the same thing publicly for years”.
Savell told him that breaching obligations of confidentiality “undermines officers who serve to protect members of the royal family and casts unnecessary doubt over their trustworthiness and integrity”.
Savell said the obligations did not extend to matters of criminality and “in such cases we urge for you to report directly to police in order that an investigation may take place”.
Page said he had contacted Thames Valley police, who had appealed for information.
Andrew has denied all wrongdoing.
The Met called on royal protection officers to come forward with information after claims they had turned a “blind eye” during visits to Little Saint James, Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands. An unnamed former senior Met protection officer said that Andrew’s protection team travelled with him to the island at least twice, including once on Epstein’s private jet.
Little Saint James
REUTERS
The Epstein files revealed that two officers stayed at the financier’s New York mansion for more than a week in 2010, despite his child sex offence conviction.
In December the Met said that it would take no further action over allegations that Andrew had asked an officer to dig for information on Virginia Giuffre, who accused him of sexually assaulting her on three occasions when she was 17.
Andrew was alleged to have passed on her date of birth and US social security number.
He has said that he does not remember meeting Giuffre, who died by suicide last year. He paid a £12 million settlement to her in 2022, without admitting liability.