Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has won a legal challenge over the lawfulness of warrants that police officers obtained to search two of the former prince’s properties before his arrest this year in connection with the Epstein files.
A judge at the High Court in London on Thursday said “a significant error was made” when Thames Valley Police obtained the warrants ahead of Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest on his 66th birthday on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
The force said it accepted that the wrong legal powers had been used when a judge at the Old Bailey in February gave officers powers to raid the residences of King Charles’s younger brother and confiscate devices and paperwork.
While the search warrants had been quashed, Mr Justice Nicholas Hilliard said on Thursday that this “does not bring the investigation to an end or mean that the whole of the investigation was unlawful”.
Detectives are now fighting, through a private court process not open to the press or the public, to retain the computers and documents they obtained, which Mountbatten-Windsor’s lawyers are opposing.
The warrants, issued by the Old Bailey on February 18, allowed officers to search Mountbatten-Windsor’s home on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk and his former home at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park.
His arrest on February 19 was the first of a member of the royal family on a criminal warrant since King Charles I at the end of the English civil war.
The warrants should not have been granted as the material concerned confidential or legally privileged records, Hilliard said. Authority can be sought to obtain such material, but it requires a higher legal hurdle.
A person familiar with the process indicated Thames Valley Police had sought the correct warrants, but that the court had assured the force that only the standard warrants were required.
Police said the investigation was continuing into Mountbatten-Windsor after revelations in the US Department of Justice’s Epstein files about his conduct while he served as an unpaid special representative for UK Trade and Investment between 2001 and 2011.
Communications in the files between Mountbatten-Windsor and Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender, show that the then-prince advocated for Epstein on a state visit to the United Arab Emirates with the late Queen Elizabeth in 2010.
The files also showed he sought to broker an $8bn loan between China and the UAE before the start of an official visit to China later the same year, and that he had shared information acquired as a result of his trade role with Epstein and his associates.
Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his titles by the King last year, denies wrongdoing.
To salvage the evidence, Thames Valley Police are now seeking to invoke separate legal powers.
A judge can allow officers to keep the material if it is established that they would be entitled to seize it anyway under the stricter search powers, but a decision is not expected until next year.
Thames Valley Police said on Thursday: “The agreement that led to the quashing of the warrants relates specifically to a decision made by the court regarding the legal basis for these and is not a judgment on our ongoing investigation.”
The force said it retained the evidence and expected to be able to examine and use it in its investigation, if it succeeds in the continuing legal action.
Nick Vamos, partner at Peters & Peters and a former head of special crime at the Crown Prosecution Service, said the police “may not ultimately pay much of a price beyond today’s red faces”.
Following the ruling, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, which speaks for senior police officers, said the national response to the release of the Epstein files was continuing to progress.
It said: “A small national team made up of two senior detectives, and intelligence experts specialising in organised exploitation, is reviewing a significant volume of material to determine where further investigation may be required.”
It said that identifying any further potential “offending, suspects, victims or witnesses” was a “complex process” and would take time.
But it added: “UK policing remains committed to carrying out a meticulous assessment of the material released by the US Department of Justice. In addition to Thames Valley Police, the Metropolitan Police and Surrey Police have live investigations linked to the release of the files.”