Prince Andrew caught up in spy case rocking Britain

3 days ago 2

By Allegra Mendelson and Poppy Wood

October 17, 2025 — 11.48am

Prince Andrew met a senior Chinese official at the centre of a Beijing spy scandal rocking the United Kingdom at least three times.

The Duke of York held meetings in 2018 and 2019 with Cai Qi, one of the most senior members of the Chinese Communist Party and a close ally of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Prince Andrew, right, with Cai Qi in London in May 2018. Cai is understood to be the recipient of sensitive information allegedly passed to China by two British nationals accused of spying for Beijing.

Cai is understood to be the final recipient of sensitive information allegedly passed to China by two British nationals accused of spying for Beijing, Christopher Berry and former parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash. They maintain their innocence.

The CCP politburo member involved has not been named in official documents, but biographical details released in court files match Cai alone. Sources also told The Telegraph he was the Chinese official at the heart of a trial against Berry and Cash that was set for this month but fell apart at the last minute after the British government refused to label China an “enemy”. Both Cash and Berry deny the charges.

Prince Andrew met the senior CCP leader at least three times in both London and Beijing during the time period when Berry and Cash were alleged to have been recruited by China for espionage.

The disclosures of Prince Andrew’s links to the senior CCP official were made as the government faces fresh scrutiny over crucial witness statements in the case of the alleged spies, with the head of MI5 expressing his frustration over its handling.

Prince Andrew, left, with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2018.

Cai previously served as a member of the provincial standing committee in Zhejiang province and mayor of Hangzhou, the city where Berry and Cash taught English in around 2017 to 2019.

Cash reportedly passed information to Berry obtained from the former’s work at the China Research Group, which comprised China-sceptic MPs. Berry is then said to have handed it to Cai through a Chinese operative known only as “Alex”.

Berry is said to have made Cash aware of the meeting with the CCP official via voice note. Cash responded in a string of messages, saying: “You’re in spy territory now”.

According to a witness statement by deputy national security adviser Matthew Collins, Alex is believed to be an “agent of the Chinese state” who was working for an organisation that was a front for the Ministry of State Security, China’s intelligence services.

Collins said in his statement that he doubted a senior Chinese official would meet with Berry unless the CCP thought by doing so they could obtain useful information.

“It is highly unlikely that one of the most senior officials in China would meet with Mr Berry unless the Chinese state considered him to be someone who could obtain valuable information,” he said.

Cai led a delegation to meet British officials in May 2018, including the Duke of York, then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon.

Prince Andrew travelled to China some weeks later where he held meetings with both Cai and Xi. The duke told Cai and other senior CCP members during a June 2018 meeting that he hoped to boost Sino-British cooperation in technology, according to Chinese state media.

A third meeting between Cai and Prince Andrew took place in April 2019, where the pair said that “jointly building a ‘golden era’ in China-UK relations has become a consensus among the two governments”, according to a post on China’s official government website.

It will be a further embarrassment for Prince Andrew, who has been scrutinised over his links to China and is facing increasing pressure over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the paedophile and financier who died in US custody in 2019.

Prince Andrew was revealed last December to have forged a close friendship with Yang Tengbo, a suspected Chinese spy who inserted himself into the highest circles of the British establishment.

A High Court judge ruled Yang had formed an “unusual degree of trust” with the Duke of York, having been invited to the royal’s birthday party in 2020 and having helped set up the Chinese branch of Prince Andrew’s Pitch@Palace initiative.

Suspected Chinese spy Yang Tengbo and Prince Andrew.

Pitch@Palace, an entrepreneurial charity launched by the Duke of York in 2014, disintegrated in the wake of revelations about his friendship with Epstein, although its global operations continued for some time afterwards.

Chinese Government posts seen by The Telegraph claim that Cai praised Prince Andrew’s charity in all three of their meetings in 2018 and 2019, stating in one that Pitch@Palace “had supported nearly 2000 entrepreneurial projects around the world, with its influence growing”.

Previous reports alleged that Prince Andrew also sent birthday letters to Xi as part of a “communication channel” with the Chinese president assisted by Yang.

Prince Andrew, left, and King Charles at a vigil for the late Queen Elizabeth II at the Palace of Westminster in London in 2022.

Fresh details about the Duke’s dealings in Beijing will likely add to pressure on King Charles to strip him of his remaining royal privileges.

The UK government is also facing renewed scrutiny over its relationship with Beijing following the publication of crucial evidence at the centre of the collapsed spy trial and criticism from the head of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum.

In his annual address, McCallum said the security service had worked “very hard” to make convictions possible and revealed that the security service had also intervened to stop a further threat from China in the past week.

Prince Andrew, left, with Virginia Roberts (Giuffre) in 2001 and Jeffrey Epstein’s then personal assistant, Ghislaine Maxwell.

It came after ministers released witness statements on Wednesday by Collins, on which the spy trial hinged and which have since become the source of a row between the government and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The statements show that Collins refrained from describing China as a threat to national security – which was required for the trial to go ahead – but did raise the alarm over “large-scale espionage operations” against the UK by Beijing.

The Telegraph has been told that Berry’s legal team recruited an academic to cast doubt on the likelihood of him meeting with Cai in Beijing while he was working as a teacher.

Professor Kerry Brown, the director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London, submitted expert analysis for the defence suggesting that senior CCP officials such as Cai are inaccessible.

Prince Andrew was approached for comment.

The Telegraph, London

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