The High Court in London ruled in favor of ex-Prince Andrew by ruling that the searches carried out at his home in February during his arrest in connection with the Epstein affair were illegal, but the police are looking for ways to keep the seized documents for their investigation. “A significant error was made in the application and issuance of the search warrants”, which “is sufficient to render these warrants, the searches and the seized material illegal”, ruled a High Court judge in a ten-page decision rendered Thursday.
The brother of King Charles III, 66, challenged before the High Court in London the legality of the searches carried out at his current home and his former residence, following his historic arrest in February. He was not present at Thursday's hearing. “The fact that the search warrants were quashed does not end the investigation, nor does it mean that the entire investigation was unlawful,” said Judge Nicholas Hilliard.
These searches were “cancelled” by the High Court on July 22, said the Thames Valley Police in a press release, which was however seeking legal means to keep the documents seized during these searches and specified that its investigation was continuing. She said she accepts "the position that the court's initial decision to issue warrants based on the specific legislation used was incorrect and that they must therefore be legally quashed", recognizing a procedural defect.
Judge Hilliard says the deposed prince opposes the police's request to preserve evidence. A hearing will be held behind closed doors, “not before 2027”, prolonging this embarrassing matter even further. The magistrate, however, stressed that “there would be little point in returning this evidence if it is to then be able to legally re-seize it on the basis of another provision”. The searches took place in the residence of King Charles III's brother in Sandringham (eastern England) and in his previous residence in Windsor, about thirty kilometers west of London.
Andrew was arrested on February 19, the day of his birthday, and taken into police custody for several hours, unprecedented in the modern history of the British royal family, after new revelations concerning his links with the American sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019 in prison. He has not been charged to date and has always denied any wrongdoing in connection with the Epstein affair. He is the subject of a police investigation for "failure in the exercise of a public function", suspected of having transmitted confidential economic documents to Jeffrey Epstein when he was the United Kingdom's trade envoy between 2001 and 2011. The police announced in May that they were also examining an accusation of sexual assault against the deposed prince.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his royal titles in 2025 by King Charles III, notably following the publication of the posthumous memoirs of Virginia Giuffre, the main accuser of Jeffrey Epstein, implicating the king's brother. He was forced to leave the Royal Lodge residence on the Windsor estate where he had lived for over twenty years and move to the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. Andrew was accused of sexual assault by American Virginia Giuffre, notably when she was 17 years old. She committed suicide in April 2025.
