From left to right: Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein at Ladies Day during Royal Ascot in Windsor, June 22, 2000. « LE MONDE » D’APRÈS REX/SIPA
At breakfast time on Thursday, February 19, on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s 66th birthday, about 10 officers from Thames Valley Police arrived at his residence on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk and arrested him. The late Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite son and the younger brother of King Charles III remains eighth in line to the British throne, and was “released under investigation” at the end of the day according to police, following the search of the Royal Lodge – his former residence in Windsor.
Thames Valley Police (West of London) confirmed at midday Thursday that officers had taken a “man in his 60s” in for questioning on suspicion of misconduct in public office (people questioned by police are generally not named in the United Kingdom, with respect to the presumption of innocence).
It is highly likely that the investigation centers on communications extracted from the millions of documents in the Epstein case published by the US Department of Justice at the end of January. These documents appear to show that Mountbatten-Windsor, who had already been stripped of all his titles and honors in 2025 due to his longtime friendship with the American sex offender, passed confidential information to him while serving as the British government’s special envoy for trade between 2001 and 2011.
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