Leaked: King Charles’s Counsel Flagged Prince Andrew’s £1.5M 'Banking Favors'

It all comes down to a bank transfer. Back in 2017, David Rowland, who founded Banque Havilland, wiped out a £1.5 million loan for Prince Andrew. It wasn't just a favor between friends. It was the tip of a decade-long iceberg where Andrew’s job as a UK trade envoy often looked more like a scouting mission for his private equity buddies. From 2001 to 2011, while he was acting as a taxpayer-funded representative for international trade, Andrew brought David and Jonathan Rowland along on official trips to resource-rich countries. He effectively gave private financiers the weight of the British Crown to help them close deals.

Then there's the email. In August 2019, a whistleblower warned Farrer & Co—then-Prince Charles’s law firm—that Andrew was helping Rowland’s bank chase a Luxembourg license. The message also reached Charles’s top aide, Clive Alderton. The accusation was blunt: Andrew cared more about Rowland’s business than his own family’s reputation. The timing is what really stings. It means the Palace knew about specific corruption claims months before that disastrous Newsnight interview eventually forced Andrew from public life.

“HRH the Duke of York’s actions suggest that his Royal Highness considers his relationship with David Rowland more important than that of his family.”

Now, the Daily Mail is claiming Andrew was arrested on February 19, 2026, for misconduct in public office. But here’s the thing: nobody else is backing that up. No cops, no Palace officials, nothing. While an arrest would be a massive, historic shift in how the Royals are treated by the law, right now it’s just tabloid noise. But even if the arrest reports are unverified, the underlying paper trail of financial impropriety remains grounded in documented bank records.

The winners in all this? The Rowlands, who got into rooms with world leaders by piggybacking on UK diplomacy. And Andrew, whose expensive lifestyle and mounting debts were quietly covered by private interests. For the rest of us, it’s about institutional accountability. The Royal Family operates on public consent and taxpayer cash. If the 'Royal brand' is being leveraged for private commissions and banking licenses, it's a direct violation of public trust and a potential breach of the ministerial code that governs trade envoys.

The real question is how much the Palace knew and when. If Charles’s inner circle buried or ignored those 2019 warnings, this scandal shifts from one man’s bad judgment to a full-blown institutional cover-up. We’re currently digging through Farrer & Co and Cabinet Office records to see if that whistleblower report was ever actually referred to the Serious Fraud Office or the Parliamentary commissioner for standards.