My Take | Arrest shows that no one is above the law, not even a former British prince

The flying visit to Hong Kong paid by Prince Andrew, as he was then, in October 2010, was a relatively low-key affair. His trip merited a brief item in the South China Morning Post noting that he would meet with the then chief executive and financial secretary, the MTR chief and tycoon Li Ka-shing, while also attending a British Chamber of Commerce lunch.

This was, it seemed, a routine trip for the then prince in his capacity as Britain’s special representative for international trade and investment. He had attended an annual Hong Kong Trade Development Council dinner in London before the visit.

It was not imagined at the time that the trip to Asia, which also took in Vietnam, Singapore and Shenzhen, would form part of an investigation by British police in 2026 that has plunged the royal family into a crisis unprecedented in modern times.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, stripped of his prince title by his brother the king last year, was arrested on his 66th birthday last week, on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He is the first senior member of the British royal family to be apprehended since Charles I in 1646.

The former prince’s ties to convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein have been a source of controversy and concern for more than 15 years. He stepped down as trade envoy the year after the Hong Kong trip because of them. Since then, revelations about Mountbatten-Windsor’s relationship with Epstein have gathered momentum. He ceased to be a working royal in 2019, was stripped of military titles and royal patronage in 2022 and ordered out of his palatial 30-room home at Royal Lodge, near Windsor Castle, last year.

But the release last month of more than 3 million pages of documents from the US Justice Department’s investigation into Epstein, who died in custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges, brought matters to a head.