Will Prince Andrew’s financier friend David ‘Spotty’ Rowland help him keep Royal Lodge?
He is said to be so anxious to stay at his Royal Lodge home that he is refusing to leave even during essential building works.
Prince Andrew, embroiled in a stand-off with his brother King Charles over his long-term residency at the £30million Windsor pile, fears that he ‘might never get back in’ if he moves out when the roof is renovated later this summer.
But the difficult truth for the Duke of York is that, if he is to stay put in his home of 20 years, he needs some independent income to keep the 30-room mansion in shape as well as to maintain the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed.
Relegated from the Civil List now that he is no longer a working Royal, and with his annual £250,000 allowance from the Duchy of Lancaster said to be under threat from Charles (who is anxious to control royal costs) the Duke now, more than ever, needs his financial backers to come through.
A rare photograph of Prince Andrew alongside his benefactor David Rowland and his late mother Queen Elizabeth at Royal Ascot in 2006
David Rowland arrives at the High Court in London in 2017 in a financial dispute relating to his Havilland Bank. Mr Rowland lent the Duke of York £1.5 million in 2017
Prince Andrew has lived at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park, formerly the home of the late Queen Mother, for two decades. His brother, the King, hopes he will move to a less ostentatious home, but Andrew has told friends he is determined to stay
Some of these benefactors are no strangers to controversy.
Key among them is his long-term friend David ‘Spotty’ Rowland, a Conservative party donor and figure of some intrigue who has been dubbed the ‘tax haven tycoon’.
Based in Guernsey where he owns the palatial Havilland Hall, the father-of-eight was once described as ‘like an older surrogate brother to Andrew’.
He has acted as the Duke’s financial adviser and has proved a central figure in his business and financial affairs for many years – including, significantly, a loan of £1.5million in 2017.
The 77-year-old, who owns the Luxembourg-based private bank Banque Havilland SA (named after his Palladian-style home) and is said to be worth more than £600 million, reportedly gave Andrew’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson £40,000 to help clear her debts.
Such wealth could prove very helpful. Although Andrew has a long lease on Royal Lodge from the Crown Estate, it is understood the terms of that lease oblige him to pay for its maintenance – and he has told friends that, if he is unable to do so, he could be forced to move out.
His former wife, Sarah Ferguson, would effectively move out, also, as she spends much of her time living at Royal Lodge.
It is generally thought such a turn of events would suit the King, who is thought to have earmarked Royal Lodge for Prince William and his family.
Fortunately for Mr Rowland, his generosity has been reciprocated. Rowland has been invited to Balmoral where he reportedly met the Queen and took tea with the then-Prince of Wales.
He is close enough to the Yorks to have been invited to Princess Eugenie’s wedding at St George’s Chapel in 2018.
But for a man who has become one of the most powerful in the City, he has enjoyed a career and personal life which might be termed unorthodox.
Born the son of a South London scrap dealer, Rowland left school without any qualifications.
But the young Rowland turned his fortunes around by becoming a property developer. He was already a company director and nearly a millionaire when, aged 21, he married Sheila Williams in Hillingdon, North London, in July 1966.
They had two children together, a daughter called Venetia and son, Jonathan.
By the time he was 23 he floated his company, Fordham, on the stock exchange and the following year he had made the equivalent of around £35million today.
It was his relative youth and lingering acne which led to him being dubbed ‘Spotty’ in business circles – and the nickname stuck.
But it was not only his business empire that was expanding.
But by the time Rowland divorced Sheila in February 1985, he already had a second family with another woman, former hairdresser Linda Anne Christy.
Their son Harley was born in February 1980, while he was still married to Sheila, and in November 1985 – nine months after his divorce came through – Linda also gave birth to twin boys, Edmund and Barclay.
Three more children have been born since then, and Rowland has largely kept his family out of the spotlight.
But his business dealings, which quickly extended beyond property, have kept him in the headlines more regularly.
The Daily Mail has reported that Rowland was unpopular among citizens as far afield as Idaho in the US, who accuse him of diverting tens of millions of dollars abroad which should have been spent on cleaning up pollution caused by a lead smelter once owned by a Rowland company called Gulf Resources.
The pollution was caused by a smelting factory when it was under previous ownership – and is not connected to Rowland himself. For six decades, it had caused serious damage to the health of local children by pumping toxic smoke into the air. Rowland wrote to 5,000 local residents in October 1990 to say the firm would not shirk its responsibilities – but within a year, he had sold his interests in Gulf, and the clean-up bill was left largely to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Royal Lodge is in Windsor Great Park. Some senior members of the Royal Family hope Andrew will agree to move to Frogmore Cottage close to Windsor Castle, now that Harry and Meghan have moved out
Andrew is said to be distressed at his loss of status as a front-line royal – but also because his brother, the King, is to cut the £250,000 annual grant he had received from the Duchy of Lancaster
It has been suggested that Andrew should move to Frogmore Cottage, but he is said to be refusing
Former employees claim their pension entitlements had been diverted, while legal documents alleged Rowland had ‘engaged in a course of conduct designed to loot and waste the assets of the company’. Rowland’s representatives say such claims are ‘false and unsubstantiated’.
There were further controversies when Rowland became involved in the football world. He was one of the first financiers to spot the money-making potential in top football clubs and was unmasked as the secret figure behind a £800,000 takeover of Edinburgh Hibernian, the parent company of Hibs, in 1987.
But the deal turned sour when the company went into receivership after asking thousands of fans to plough their own money into the club.
Upmarket estate agents Chesterton also went into receivership after 200 years of trading after Rowland used one of his trusts to buy it.
But it is as a private banker that he has made the majority of his wealth. He set up Banque Havilland in 2009 from the ashes of a collapsed Icelandic financial institution and used it to offer discrete private banking services to the world’s billionaires.
Some of those dealings have been called into question.
In 2019, The Mail on Sunday reported Rowland had travelled to North Korea to hold talks with leaders in Pyongyang about managing the personal fortunes of the rogue state’s ruling family, as well as helping the Communist regime set up companies abroad.
Rowland’s son Jonathan, who has held positions in the bank, denied that his family had anything to do with North Korea.
It is not clear how or when Rowland met Prince Andrew, but they were close by 2005, when Rowland invited the Duke to his Guernsey estate to unveil a life-sized statue of himself smoking a cigar.
The pair co-owned a business in a Caribbean tax haven and Andrew flew around the world on a £40million jet owned by Rowland. The businessman reportedly flew to Libya with Andrew in 2011 when the Prince met Colonel Gaddafi.
When Rowland’s bank was established, it was Andrew who went to Luxembourg to officially open it.
But this relationship has courted controversy, particularly after Andrew used his position as a special trade envoy to promote the bank abroad while on official business for the UK taxpayer.
Emails seen by The Mail on Sunday reveal that Andrew had contacted the office of Albert II, sovereign Prince of Monaco, on behalf of Rowland and asked for information about how to open a new bank in the principality.
He forwarded responses he received from Heather Acheson, Prince Albert’s principal attaché, to Jonathan Rowland – then the bank’s director – and told him he would be ‘going down in March to see P Albert so between now and then we can do more if required’.
It is unclear whether the Duke provided further help or raised the matter personally with Prince Albert. But in April 2012, Banque Havilland did open a subsidiary in Monaco after buying another private bank there, Dexia Private.
Guest of honour at the opening ceremony was Prince Andrew.
It was in 2017 that the Rowlands’ bank agreed a loan to the Duke of £1.5million. A report from Bloomberg suggested that, although the loan was ‘not in line with the bank’s risk appetite’, banking staff approved it on the basis that it opened up ‘further business potential with the Royal family’.
For Andrew’s part, a spokesman described the transfer of funds as ‘private’, and the Bank denied any wrongdoing.
But it is clear the links with Andrew are appealing. Shortly after the loan agreement, Rowland invited Andrew to the launch of a joint venture between one of his banks and a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi.
And Jonathan Rowland’s company, JGOO, also appeared to hope it might benefit from the relationship.
Jonathan sent staff at JGOO a video recorded from within Buckingham Palace gates in which he said he had spent time with Andrew and that the company was ‘on the agenda now’.
A company insider told The Mail on Sunday that JGOO – which helps British firms take payments from Chinese visitors via mobile phone apps – expected to land a contract with Buckingham Palace allowing Chinese tourists to use their phones to buy entry tickets and mementos from the gift shop.
The deal was never agreed – and Jonathan subsequently denied discussing JGOO with Andrew at the Palace.
The Rowlands’ latest bout of controversy involves a £10million fine which was last month imposed on Banque Havilland by the Financial Conduct Authority for allegedly plotting to wage an economic war on Qatar.
David Rowland’s son, Jonathan, is also a financier. At one point he appeared to link his business venture JGOO with Buckingham Palace and Andrew
David Rowland, who was once expected to be Conservative Party Treasurer, pictured returning home in Knightsbridge
The allegations – denied by the bank and by Rowland’s son Edmund, its former UK boss, who was personally fined and banned from working in financial services – are that the bank drew up manipulative trading strategies to devalue Qatar’s currency.
While there has been no FCA action against David Rowland, he is also said to be appealing against the decisions on the basis that the findings ‘identified and prejudiced him’.
The last few years, and Andrew’s relationship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein in particular, have perhaps devalued Andrew’s own currency.
Will Rowland continue to back him, and perhaps even secure his place at Royal Lodge?