Prince Andrew ‘met China spymaster at least three times’
Prince Andrew met at least three times with a senior Beijing official at the center of the Chinese spying scandal, according to reports.
The Duke of York held meetings in 2018 and 2019 with Cai Qi, who is now the first-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Secretariat and Xi Jinping’s de facto private secretary.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) last month dropped charges against suspected spies Christopher Berry and Christopher Cash for lack of evidence; both denied any wrongdoing.
Before the charges were dropped, Mr. Cai was suspected of being the recipient of sensitive information allegedly transferred to China by two British nationals accused of spying for Beijing.
Prince Andrew has met with the senior CCP figure at least three times. TelegramBoth in London and Beijing during the period when Mr Berry and Mr Cash were allegedly recruited to spy.
The Duke was among British officials who met Mr Cai and his Beijing delegation in May 2018, along with then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon, former Cabinet Office minister David Lidington and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, according to reports in Chinese state media.
British officials attending the meeting said that the cooperation between the two countries has great potential, at a time when the Golden Age in British-Chinese relations is talked about.
A few weeks later, Prince Andrew traveled to China to launch a boot camp for his Pitch@Palace business initiative at Peking University, according to state media reports at the time, and expressed his desire to help Chinese businesses access the global market. A meeting between the Duke and Mr Cai, as well as other senior CCP members, was allegedly held in 2018, in which Cai expressed his hope for increasing Sino-British cooperation in technology. Telegram.
The Duke returned to China in April 2019, where he brought Pitch@Palace to Shenzhen, southern China’s Guangdong Province. He reportedly met with Mr. Cai again. Telegram The duo stated that “jointly building a ‘golden age’ in China-Britain relations has become a consensus between the two governments.”
This is not the first time the Prince’s ties to China have attracted attention, as he came under criticism in December for his friendship with alleged spy Yang Tengbo. Mr. Yang was detained under the Anti-Terrorism and Border Security Act in 2021; Correspondence was found on his digital devices suggesting he was working for the United Front Labor Department, a shadowy arm of the Chinese Communist Party, which led to him being banned from the UK.
Mr. Yang appealed to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which rejected his appeal, which made his case public. The ruling cited evidence presented by the Ministry of Internal Affairs alleging that Mr Yang was a close confidant of the Prince and was acting on his behalf with investors in China.
Information about the Duke’s links to China comes as the government and CPS face increasing pressure to explain why the Chinese spy case collapsed, with MI5 chief Sir Ken McCallum saying he was “disappointed” by the move.
MPs demanded CPS chief Stephen Parkinson provide “a fuller explanation of the dropping of charges”, which Parkinson attributed to insufficient evidence that China posed a threat to the UK at the time of the alleged crimes.
Meanwhile, Downing Street answered questions about why the Prime Minister did not intervene in the case. Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said: “The suggestion that the Prime Minister should step in at this point is frankly absurd.
“If he did that, he would be intervening in a case about the previous government, the previous policy, the previous legislation.”
A Chinese embassy spokesman said the published witness statements were “full of unfounded accusations against China.”
Independent He approached the Duke of York for comment.
