Will it be trade emails, not the Epstein scandal, that finish off ‘Air Miles Andy’?

As new revelations emerge about the former duke’s dealings with Jeffrey Epstein, the question is no longer whether he exercised terrible judgement – but whether he broke the law, says Alexander Larman

The notorious gangster Al Capone was imprisoned not for his reign of violent terror in Chicago, but for federal income tax evasion – a technical offence that nonetheless allowed the authorities to put him behind bars.

And so, nearly a century later, it may well be that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is not brought down by allegations of sex trafficking with underage girls, or even the many lies he has demonstrably told about his relationship with the billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Instead, he may yet be undone by his status as “Air Miles Andy” – the British trade envoy – and by seemingly using his privileged position to leak confidential documents to Epstein, which the financier could then exploit for his own purposes.

If this has echoes of the Peter Mandelson scandal – multiple documents in the Epstein files appear to show that the former business secretary in Gordon Brown’s government forwarded him confidential and market-sensitive government emails – that is hardly surprising. Much that Epstein touched has continued to prove toxic and corrosive, even several years after his death.

One striking similarity betweenMountbatten-Windsor and Mandelson is that both men undoubtedly accepted the sex offender’s hospitality and largesse – and that Epstein expected, even demanded, a quid pro quo in the form of privileged information.

At the moment, it is not even a formal allegation that either the former politician or the former duke acted in a way they knew to be wrong. Yet the damning information that Mountbatten-Windsor allegedly passed by email to Epstein in 2010 – including four separate assessments of his trade visits to Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Shenzhen – to me at least, suggests that there is at least something worth investigating.

These assessments were shared in direct contravention of the basic understanding that such material should remain confidential and privileged. Mountbatten-Windsor forwarded the messages to Epstein within minutes of receiving them.

He seemed all too happy to jet around the world at publicly funded expense, in a role largely created to give him something to do that flattered his considerable ego.

It is also telling, and entirely predictable, that the leaking of this information to Epstein happened in 2010, long after the financier had served a 13-month prison sentence for having procured a child for prostitution. The email chain suggests the intelligence was passed to him shortly before notorious photographs of the two men walking together in Central Park were published the following month. Mountbatten-Windsor later claimed he was visiting Epstein to break off their friendship in person. It now looks to me far more likely that the pair were, in fact, discussing business.

This morning, the Prince and Princess of Wales issued a strongly worded statement saying they were “deeply concerned” about the “continuing revelations” surrounding the Epstein fallout, and that “their thoughts remain focused on the victims”. It follows Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh’s public remark last week about his brother, Mountbatten-Windsor, and his former sister-in-law, Sarah Ferguson, stating that it is “really important always to remember the victims”.

If key individuals within the royal family want the public to know they understand this story is far from resolved, it has hardly escaped the attention of the King. Not for the first time, he was today heckled about his brother by a member of the public during a walkabout in Clitheroe.

The question for the royals now is whether it would be better for Mountbatten-Windsor to face the full force of the law – complete with arrest, a humiliating public trial and the possibility of conviction and imprisonment – or whether the current status quo, whereby he is effectively exiled to Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate, where he can be kept out of sight and out of mind, can hold.

It would be richly ironic if Mountbatten-Windsor were finally brought down not by abuse claims, but by trade documents. Yet it would also be a grimly fitting end to an ignominious public life. Few, I suspect, would feel any sympathy for him in any case.