Prince Andrew Helped a Secretive Luxembourg Bank Woo Sketchy Clients

It isn’t much fun these days being Prince Andrew, eighth in line to the British throne. Last year he was grounded by his mother, the queen, after a disastrous TV interview about his links to the late money manager and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The prince rarely leaves the confines of Windsor Great Park, where he lives in a 30-room house, and he hasn’t made a public statement in months. When he does communicate, it’s through lawyers sparring with U.S. prosecutors who want to question him.

But Epstein is only the most infamous wealthy financier the prince has had dealings with. There’s another one the public knows less about. For years, Andrew acted as an unofficial door opener for David Rowland and his private bank in Luxembourg, Banque Havilland SA, according to a trove of emails, internal documents, and previously unreported regulatory filings reviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek, as well as interviews with 10 former bank insiders. His royal cachet and his role as the U.K.’s special representative for international trade and investment until 2011 helped the Rowland family pitch their services to potential clients from the ranks of the world’s dictators and kleptocrats.

Then in 2011 a photograph published in the Daily Mail drew unwanted scrutiny. It showed the prince with his arm around a young woman in Epstein’s entourage as Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and alleged co-conspirator, looked on. Andrew would later claim that the photograph may have been doctored, but the image came at a bad time for the Rowlands: Jonathan, David’s son and Banque Havilland’s then-chief executive officer, was planning a trip to Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon to scout for business, and he wanted Andrew to join him.

The previous year the Rowlands had accompanied the prince on an official visit to China, where Andrew had given them access to some of his meetings. In other countries and on other occasions, they introduced themselves as investment advisers to the prince and the royal family when wooing clients. But Andrew never went on that trip to Africa. “Disappear for a while,” Jonathan advised the prince in an email obtained by the Daily Mail, which has reported on some aspects of Andrew’s dealings with the Rowlands.

Andrew’s relationship with the family was mutually beneficial. It afforded him a lifestyle beyond the reach of his reported $320,000 annual stipend, including trappings such as the use of the Rowlands’ $45 million jet. He had a private bank account at Banque Havilland and a credit card in the name of Andrew Inverness, a pseudonym that’s an apparent nod to one of his many titles, Earl of Inverness. For the Rowlands, Andrew’s involvement brought some class to a tiny financial institution they’d purchased on the cheap in 2009 from the ruins of Iceland’s Kaupthing Bank.

They rechristened it after Havilland Hall, David Rowland’s estate on Guernsey, a tax haven in the Channel Islands, and settled on an unusually bold business model. Most banks have become increasingly selective about their clients to avoid running afoul of anti-money-laundering rules. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic require them to vet the sources of their clients’ wealth, monitor their transactions, and report any suspicious activity—with more stringent checks for those who hold prominent public positions. But the picture of Banque Havilland that emerges from the documents and interviews is of a bank willing to work with people most other financial institutions would shun.

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