Good morning.
"Do you have corruption in your country?" a Nairobi taxi driver asked me a few days ago. He seemed reassured by my reply that "Yes, we do, it’s just a bit more subtle".
British corruption is more subtle, but it’s no less nefarious than any other form of graft. Our corruption and nepotism is typically based on who you went to school or university (Oxford or Cambridge) with, and which politicians or senior officials in government, high finance or otherwise are your friends. Billions of pounds of taxpayer money was lost to corruption during the Covid pandemic, as countless procurement contracts were awarded without due tender processes.
But there’s nothing subtle about the accusations facing Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor – the man formerly known as Prince Andrew – after he was arrested and his house on his brother, King Charles II’s private estate, was raided by the police.
Mountbatten-Windsor was in custody under police caution on Thursday (19 February) evening pending investigation into allegations of ‘misconduct in public office’ aka grand corruption.
A friend of Jeffrey Epstein, the paedophile and sex trafficker, Mountbatten-Windsor is arguably the biggest fish to have been snared by data dump of several million pages of emails and text by the US Department of Justice.
The allegations date back to when he was UK trade envoy between 2001 and 2011. Fame and fortune can buy you many things and while it can’t make you a prince, it can make it easier to be friends with a prince.
Andrew’s arrest is very, very, big news in Britain. The last British royal to be arrested was King Charles I in 1648 at the end of a civil war which he lost. Unlike Charles, Andrew won’t be beheaded, though he could still face jail time.
But he’s not the only big name to be caught in the Epstein net. Norway’s former prime minister Thorbjørn Jagland is under investigation for "aggravated corruption", while prosecutors in France have launched several investigations into Epstein era offences involving public officials. In Slovakia, national security advisor Miroslav Lajčák, a former foreign minister, has resigned over his links to Epstein.
Like all good corruption scandals, this one is being drip-fed slowly. Such was Epstein’s network of politicians and top officials on speed dial; we may still only have touched the tip of the tentacle.
Benjamin Fox, trade and geopolitics editor
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