A Chinese businessman who had forged close links with Prince Andrew and was authorised to act on his behalf to seek investors in China has been banned from Britain on national security grounds.

The 50-year-old man, who has been granted anonymity and is named only as H6, was banned in March 2023 but his relationship to the prince has only come to light in a written ruling released on Thursday by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).

Businessman 'obscured his links' to CCP

H6 was taken off a flight from Beijing to London in February 2023 and told that Britain intended to ban him from the country. This happened the following month.

He appealed against the ban at the SIAC, but it rejected his case this week.

The ruling said H6's ban came after the contents of his phone were downloaded when he was stopped under counterterrorism laws at a UK border in 2021.

Documents on his phone suggested H6 had "deliberately obscured his links" with the Chinese Communist Party and the United Front Work Department and been in a position to generate relationships between prominent UK figures and senior Chinese officials which Beijing could leverage, the ruling stated.

The United Front Work Department is a network of groups that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has described as a "magic weapon" to bolster Beijing's reach abroad.

Prince Andrew 'vulnerable' to spy's influence

Documents on H6's phone also revealed Prince Andrew had authorised the businessman to set up an international financial initiative to engage with potential partners and investors in China. The ruling did not say what the fund was intended for.

The SIAC ruling referred to a 2021 document recovered from H6's device that listed talking points for a call between him and Prince Andrew and said the prince "is in a desperate situation and will grab onto anything".

The written decision revealed a letter from one of Prince Andrew's senior advisors to H6 from March 2020, which noted H6 had been invited to Prince Andrew's birthday party that month and stated: "I also hope that it is clear to you where you sit with my principal and indeed his family.

"You should never underestimate the strength of that relationship … outside of his closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on."

It added that following a meeting between Prince Andrew, H6 and the adviser, they had "wisely navigated our way around former Private Secretaries and we have found a way to carefully remove those people who we don't completely trust".

"Under your guidance, we found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house in Windsor," the letter said. The ruling did not say who the people were or give the reason for potential distrust.

Judge Charles Bourne said in the ruling that H6 had "won a significant degree, one could say an unusual degree, of trust from a senior member of the royal family who was prepared to enter into business activities with him".

The judge added: "That occurred in a context where, as the contemporaneous documents record, the Duke was under considerable pressure and could be expected to value (H6's) loyal support.

Justice Bourne said Britain's Home Office was entitled to conclude that H6 had significant links to the Chinese Communist Party and the United Front Work Department and that there was potential for him "leveraging" his relationship with Prince Andrew.

The prince, 64, the eighth in line to the throne, was a roving UK trade ambassador from 2001-2011.

He was forced to step aside from public duties in 2019 over his friendship with the late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Prince Andrew has always denied any accusations of wrongdoing. In 2022, the royal family removed his military links and royal patronages.

Reuters/AFP