Fresh claims reveal that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor may have charged taxpayers for massages and excessive travel costs while working as the UK\u2019s trade envoy.<\/p>\n
A former civil servant told the BBC<\/a> that he had refused the disgraced former prince\u2019s request to pay for \u201cmassage services\u201d but he was overruled by more senior staff.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought it was wrong\u2026 I\u2019d said we mustn\u2019t pay it, but we ended up paying it anyway,\u201d he told the outlet, about a claim that came after Andrew\u2019s visit to the Middle East.<\/p>\n Sign up to The Nightly’s newsletters.<\/p>\n Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n By continuing you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Andrew served as the UK\u2019s special representative for international trade and investment from 2001 to 2011, giving him access to senior government contacts around the world.<\/p>\n Duties of the role include engaging with host governments, leading trade delegations, and meeting businesses in the UK.<\/p>\n The claim that Andrew was mishandling public funds was backed up by a former senior Whitehall official who told the BBC he has \u201cabsolutely no doubt\u201d about its authenticity.<\/p>\n He oversaw finances in this area, and claims he had seen similar expenses for Andrew\u2019s trips.<\/p>\n He had been shocked by the scale of Andrew\u2019s lavish spending as envoy, he told the BBC, including what he thought were excessive flights and unreasonable numbers of hotel rooms.<\/p>\n \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe it\u2026 it was like it wasn\u2019t real money, they weren\u2019t spending any of their own money,\u201d the senior official said.<\/p>\n He added that costs were hard to trace due to them disappearing into different budgets.<\/p>\n The shocking claim comes just days after the former prince was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in the public office.<\/p>\n Police swooped in on Andrew\u2019s Sandringham home last Thursday \u2014 his 66th birthday \u2014 and drove him to Aylsham police investigation centre.<\/p>\n Officers are understood to be investigating allegations emerging from the Jeffrey Epstein files that he shared sensitive information with the convicted paedophile during his time as a trade envoy.<\/p>\n After spending 11 hours being questioned, the disgraced royal was driven home in a Range Rover without being charged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh claims reveal that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor may have charged taxpayers for massages and excessive travel costs while working…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,84,13935,41,39,42,40,1720],"class_list":["post-499189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-royals","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}