Police returned to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s former home on Friday, continuing a search that began the day after his arrest and detention in Britain’s widening investigation tied to Jeffrey Epstein.
According to the Associated Press, investigators searched Royal Lodge, the former 30-room home near Windsor Castle from which he was evicted earlier this month. Unmarked vans believed to be police vehicles entered the grounds on Friday morning, and the search was expected to continue for several days, AP reported.
The search comes as Mountbatten-Windsor remained under investigation by Thames Valley Police. The force responsible for areas west of London said he has neither been charged nor exonerated, a status that means investigators are still gathering material before any prosecution decision.
Earlier on Friday, police concluded their search at Mountbatten-Windsor’s new residence on the Sandringham estate, the private retreat of King Charles III about 115 miles (185 kilometers) northeast of London. Mountbatten-Windsor was pictured slouched in the back of a chauffeur-driven car after his release from a police station near Sandringham on Thursday evening, after he had been held in custody for nearly 11 hours.
The arrest “follows years of allegations” about Mountbatten-Windsor’s links to Epstein, who died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019, AP said. The central accusation, the report said, is that Mountbatten-Windsor shared confidential trade information with Epstein when he was a U.K. trade envoy.
The AP said that emails released last month by the U.S. Department of Justice appeared to show Mountbatten-Windsor sharing reports of official visits to Hong Kong, Vietnam and Singapore, and sending Epstein a confidential brief on investment opportunities in Afghanistan. Thames Valley Police had previously said it was also reviewing allegations that a woman was trafficked to the U.K. by Epstein for a sexual encounter with Andrew, and it said Thursday’s arrest had nothing to do with that.
Police swept into Mountbatten-Windsor’s home to arrest him at 8 a.m. Thursday, his 66th birthday, before taking him to Aylsham police station for questioning. AP reported that it is not known what he told officers, and that his account may have been limited to silence or “no comment,” as is his right.
A legal analysis from defense and law practitioners included in the AP report underscored the difficulty of proving “misconduct in a public office.” Sean Caulfield, a criminal defense lawyer at Hodge Jones & Allen, said: “Firstly, it must be determined if Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was in a role within government that constitutes the title of public officer,” adding that “there is no standard definition to clearly draw on.” The Crown Prosecution Service will ultimately decide whether to charge him.
Andrew Gilmore, a partner at Grosvenor Law, told AP that prosecutors would apply the two-stage test known as the “Code for Crown Prosecutors.” He said: “That test is to determine whether there is a more realistic prospect of a conviction than not based on the evidence and whether the matter is in the public interest.” He added: “If these two tests are met, then the matter will be charged and proceed to court.”
Beyond the policing operation, the arrest has revived questions about Mountbatten-Windsor’s future place in the monarchy. AP reported that the British government is considering formally removing him from the line of succession to the crown, with a change requiring new legislation because he remains eighth in line as of now.
James Murray, the government’s chief secretary to the treasury, said the government is reviewing what steps may be required and “we’re not ruling anything out.” AP said the government last time a royal was stripped from the line was after the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936, when laws changed to remove him and his descendants from the list.
Even if Parliament acts, removing Mountbatten-Windsor would also require agreement from more than a dozen other countries, AP said, including Jamaica, Canada and Australia, that have the British monarch as head of state.
While prosecutors weigh potential charges in the separate misconduct inquiry, other policing and intelligence work has continued across jurisdictions. AP said that other police forces are conducting investigations into Epstein’s links to the U.K., including assessing flight logs at airports, and coordinating their work within a national group.
On Friday, London’s Metropolitan Police said it was assessing, with help from U.S. counterparts, whether capital airports including Heathrow “may have been used to facilitate human trafficking and sexual exploitation.” The force said it was also asking past and present officers who protected Mountbatten-Windsor to “consider carefully” whether they saw or heard anything relevant to those investigations, and it said no new criminal allegations have been made in its jurisdiction as of now.
AP said Mountbatten-Windsor has consistently denied any wrongdoing in his association with Epstein but has not commented on the most recent allegations surfaced with the so-called “Epstein files.” The report also said the allegations under investigation in the Thursday arrest are separate from claims advanced by Virginia Giuffre, who alleged she was trafficked to Britain to have sex with the prince in 2001 when she was 17; Giuffre died by suicide last year. Giuffre’s sister-in-law, Amanda Roberts, told AP she received a phone call early Thursday about the arrest and said her reaction was mixed by the knowledge that she could not share “vindication” with Giuffre.
In a statement Thursday, King Charles said “the law must take its course,” but that “as this process continues, it would not be right for me to comment further on this matter.”