The British royal family is a roller coaster of convictions and redemptions, of punishments and rewards. , sucking his big toe, on a Caribbean beach. Or when his shady influence peddling schemes to finance a high pace of life became known. And yet, the Duchess of York has earned this week the praise and thanks of King Charles III, according to several United Kingdom media, for her discreet diplomatic efforts to convince her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, that he should avoid his brother a new embarrassing situation.
His absence at the traditional Christmas dinner that the family held on Thursday at the Sandringham residence has allowed the palace to distance itself from the new scandal. has opened a storm in the United Kingdom.
“Andrés is a very reckless individual, but he has not had access to any secrets or important information,” said this Wednesday Tom Tugendhat, conservative deputy and former president of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, who joined the chorus of those who tried to protect the British king from his brother’s entanglements. “The king has been extremely careful to ensure that his position [de Andrés] within the royal family is very limited (…) I don’t need to remember that Prince Andrew has been an idiot for many years, and we have proven it again.”
The Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, knows that the Asian power is today, as the British intelligence services themselves have pointed out, one of the main threats to the country’s political and economic security. But he is also a commercial actor who cannot be turned away.
A group of MPs, led by the conservative Ian Duncan-Smith, has been demanding tougher measures against the Chinese government for years. Among other things, they propose elevating to a crime the maneuvers of any foreign agent who works in the United Kingdom to benefit their country without revealing that purpose.
That is exactly what is attributed to Yang Tengbo, also known as Chris Yang and long-time president of the Hampton Court mining company. The businessman, who has lived for two decades between London and Beijing, has been accused by a British court of acting as a spy and of using the Duke of York to access high levels of power.
Detained at an airport in 2021 while trying to re-enter the United Kingdom, they found substantial information on his mobile phone – texts and photographs – detailing his special relationship with Prince Andrew. Thanks to that contact he had been able to access events at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Saint James’s Palace, as well as the Duke of York’s 60th birthday celebration. On the device they also found photos of the alleged agent with the former prime ministers and
Andrés’ financial distress
in which Andrew of England tried unsuccessfully to explain his relationship with the American millionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged sexual abuse of Virgina Giuffre when she was a minor, led Buckingham Palace to remove the Duke of York from all official activities of the british royal house
a clear recognition of his guilt, was the definitive blow that condemned Andrés to social ostracism.
Since then, he has desperately sought ways to maintain his high economic standard of living, which includes the residence in which he lives within the Windsor complex.
His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, and later his brother, Charles III, allowed him to continue with the project called Pitch@Palace (something like “launch an idea in the palace”), competition events at the residences of the British royal family in which young entrepreneurs with ideas could present their projects to businessmen with the ambition to invest.
Andrés secured the sponsorship of large banks and multinationals, which allowed him to continue earning large commissions. He extended the experiment Pitch@Palace to several countries, including China. The tentacles of Beijing and its supposed agent, Yang Tengbo, slipped through that crack.
The tone between arrogant and naive in which Andrés’ advisor and assistant, Dominic Hampshire, a financier who for years has done his own business thanks to his proximity to the Duke, points out to the supposed Chinese spy how lucky he is is striking. “I trust that you are clear about the position to which you have had access, both in regards to my boss [Andrés] like his family,” he says in one of the emails that the British court was able to see. “Never underestimate the strength of this relationship. Outside of your closest confidants, you are going to get to the top of a tree that many people would like to climb,” Hampshire explains to Tengbo condescendingly.
Very different from the derogatory tone that the Chinese agent uses to explain to his superiors how the prince should be handled: “It is really important not to set very high expectations,” says a document intercepted from the supposed businessman. “He is in a desperate situation, and he will grab at anything,” he says when referring to Andrés.
A year and a half ago, he claimed that “China had successfully penetrated all sectors of the British economy.” That text indicated that both public and private Chinese companies, cultural and academic institutions, and even ordinary citizens, “could be co-opted.” [por el Gobierno de Pekín] for espionage work or interference operations abroad.”
The new scandal involving Prince Andrew, which Beijing has reduced to a “baseless spy story”, has served to remind us of that theoretical threat to the Starmer Government.
