A top aide to Prince Andrew is urging a court to withhold his account of the prince’s relationship with an alleged Chinese spy because he did not realise it could become public.
Dominic Hampshire played a key role in the development of Yang Tengbo’s relationship with the Duke of York – but the full details of what happened between the three men remain unclear.
Last month a court rejected Mr Yang’s appeal against being banned from the UK, after an intelligence assessment that he could be secretly working for the Chinese state. Mr Yang has denied all wrongdoing.
Lawyers for the and other media organisations argued at the Special Immigrations Appeal Commission (Siac) on Friday that Mr Hampshire could not keep his account private simply because he had lacked the “common sense” to find out if it might become public.
In December, the court said Mr Yang had formed an “unusual degree of trust” with the prince and had not disclosed his links to an arm of the Chinese Communist Party clandestinely involved in political interference.
It upheld the home secretary’s conclusion that he was a threat to national security.
The and other news organisations are now asking Siac to release a witness statement that Mr Hampshire wrote in support of Mr Yang after the aide had been first contacted by British intelligence.
In submissions on Friday, lawyers for Mr Hampshire said that he had sought assurances from Mr Yang’s lawyers that the witness statement would remain private – and he had only realised it could become public when he arrived at the appeal hearing last July.
Mr Hampshire then withdrew the statement in an attempt to prevent it from becoming public.
“I was told that the information [in the statement] would be kept private and confidential,” Mr Hampshire said to the court in written submissions on Friday.
“If there was any question of this being available in the public domain, I was not warned of it.
“If I had been, I would never have agreed to submit a witness statement, much less go into the level of confidential detail which I did.
“I wrote what I did in the statement with such candour – including about my own confidential commercial interests but also about the private interests of third parties – in the expectation it was for the private attention of one of the most senior ministries of state on a grave matter.
“I quite simply would not have volunteered to write about those matters had I known that there was any chance, however small, that it was for use in a forum which was or could become public.”
Adam Wolanski KC, representing the media organisations, said there was an exceptionally strong public interest case to release Mr Hampshire’s account to journalists, along with other documents that remain confidential.
“It is extraordinary that a person in Mr Hampshire’s position, apparently charged with dealing with confidential and sensitive matters on behalf of the Duke of York, did not bother obtaining his own legal advice before agreeing to provide a witness statement to Mr Yang,” said Mr Wolanski in written submissions.
“Mr Hampshire cannot now pray in aid his mystifying and unexplained decision to give a witness statement in this obviously highly contentious matter without seeking his own legal advice.
“He should not be permitted to benefit from his, to put it kindly, lack of common sense and his bad decision to proceed without legal advice.
“The court must instead proceed on the basis that he made this decision with his eyes open, knowing the risk that the evidence may become public.”
Mr Yang became a highly trusted confidante of Prince Andrew following the duke’s interview with the ‘s Newsnight programme in November 2019, which detailed the Duke’s friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The fallout from the interview led to the prince withdrawing from public duties – and the end of his commercially successful Dragons Den-style investor events in the UK and China.
In March 2020, Mr Hampshire told Mr Yang in a letter that he had managed to salvage the prince’s reputation in China.
Seven months later the businessman was authorised to represent the prince in China in a planned $3bn investment fund.
The “Eurasia Fund” scheme aimed to raise cash to invest in Chinese state projects in Africa and the Middle East.
Developing the regions is a cornerstone of the Chinese Communist Party’s plan to expand its diplomatic and financial reach.
The discovery of the scheme, and the fear that the prince was being drawn into a complex Beijing plan to influence him, led the home secretary to ban Mr Yang from the UK.
He has denied all wrongdoing – saying he is a legitimate businessman who has worked for decades to improve links between China and the UK.
Mr Yang came to study in the UK in 2002 and later set up a series of China-related travel and business consultancy firms.
He met the Duke of York in 2014 and later took on a role in the China-based version of Prince Andrew’s “Pitch@Palace” events, in which entrepreneurs sell their ideas to investors.
Siac will rule later on whether further documents from the case will be made public.
