Rounding off what has been a seriously challenging year for the Royal Family were new claims that Prince Andrew had an "unusual degree of trust" with an alleged Chinese spy - who has been banned from the UK. Initially, the alleged spy was not named and was referred to only as 'H6' in the UK's national security court, which operates on a semi-secret basis, and oversaw his ban from the UK.
However, the alleged spy's identity was later revealed as Yang Tengbo, 50, who denies he acted as a spy and said in a statement "I have asked my legal team to disclose my identity. I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a 'spy; is entirely untrue.".
A letter from one of Andrew's advisors was found on one of Yang's devices in 2021, referred to the alleged spy as a "close confidant" of the Duke of York. "Outside of [the prince's] closest internal confidants, you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on," the letter from Dominic Hampshire read, who added, "Under your guidance, we found a way to get the relevant people unnoticed in and out of the house in Windsor.".
Whilst the identities of the "relevant people" were not disclosed in the court's ruling, the advisor to Andrew also said that Yang could act on the Duke of York's behalf when it came to "potential partners and investors in China". Yang is reported to have visited Andrew at Buckingham Palace twice and took the Duke's Pitch@Palace scheme to China where he launched an arm of the project. The alleged spy is also said to have been invited to Andrew's 60th birthday party in 2020.
