Police warrants used to search Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor‘s home have been ruled as unlawful by the High Court.
The disgraced former Duke of York, 66, launched legal action against Thames Valley Police over the warrants. He was arrested on his birthday, February 19, but has never been charged and maintains his innocence.
Police were investigating allegations of misconduct in public office in relation to his time as a UK trade commissioner between 2001 and 2011, with the probe being sparked by documents in the Epstein files.
However, on Thursday, October 8, London’s High Court heard there were legal issues with how the judge at The Old Bailey granted the warrants.
The court heard that Thames Valley Police had applied for search warrants under sections eight and nine of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 at a Central Criminal Court hearing the day before the raid.
However, the court ruled that only section eight search warrants were needed and granted, but the legal challenge established that the warrants should have instead been issued under section nine.
Thames Valley Police has accepted that the warrants were technically unlawful; however, the force is reapplying to keep the material they found.
“We accept the position that the initial court’s decision to issue warrants under the specific piece of legislation used was incorrect and therefore these must be legally quashed,” a Thames Valley Police spokesperson said.
This does not mean the criminal investigation into Mountbatten-Windsor, who has denied any wrongdoing, has ended.
Presiding judge Mr Justice Hillard said “the fact that the search warrants were quashed does not bring an investigation to an end, or mean that the whole of the investigation was unlawful”.
The investigation is ongoing. The police continue to hold the items seized in the raid, including documents and electronic devices, and a further hearing is scheduled for 2027.
“There would be little point in handing property back if it could then simply be lawfully seized under some other provision,” the judge ruled.
Mountbatten-Windsor, who was not present in court on Thursday, is opposing the police’s bid to retain the evidence.
The royal launched his legal battle over the warrants earlier this year, but it was only made public in the week before the High Court hearing.
Outside court, Mountbatten-Windsor’s unauthorised biographer Andrew Lownie described the ruling as technical.
“We don’t get the sense that any evidence will not be able to be used as a result of this,” he told the ABC.
Meanwhile, criminal lawyer Nick Vamos described the police’s error as “embarrassing” in such a high-profile case.
“This should have gone under so many noses before it went to court that it’s really amazing that they still managed to make a basic error,” he told the BBC.
Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested after the documents released by the US Department of Justice raised suspicions that he had forwarded confidential information to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Mountbatten-Windsor has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.
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