Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as the Duke of York, has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
A statement from Thames Valley police said that “we have today (19/2) arrested a man in his sixties from Norfolk on suspicion of misconduct in public office and are carrying our searches at addresses in Berkshire and Norfolk.
“The man remains in custody at this time”.
The police have not named the man in custody, though given the charges, the location and the investigation they refer to, it is understood that it is Mountbatten-Windsor.
Mountbatten-Windsor has been living in the new location of Sandringham, Norfolk, since leaving his former home of the Royal Lodge in Windsor earlier this month.
The former prince has been under immense scrutiny for the past few years, with the most recent release of files relating to the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, ramping it up even further. Documents in the recent release raised questions as to whether Mountbatten-Windsor had shared information with Epstein, which he would have been privy to as part of his role as the UK’s trade envoy.
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Andrew has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Earlier this month, King Charles released a statement about his brother, in which he expressed his “profound concern at allegations which continue to come to light in respect to Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s conduct”.
The King said he stood “ready to support” police in their investigation.
Earlier this month, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer responded to a question about Mountbatten-Windsor, saying that "nobody is above the law".
During a now infamous interview with Newsnight in 2019, Mountbatten-Windsor described meeting Epstein “through his girlfriend back in 1999” and described him as having had “had the most extraordinary ability to bring extraordinary people together”.
Mountbatten-Windsor denied having met Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre (formerly Roberts), saying she must have been mistaken that the pair danced at Tramp nightclub because he had been at Pizza Express in Woking at the time.
When further pressed by interviewer Emily Maitlis over the alleged meeting, Mountbatten-Windsor said that Giuffre's account of him "profusely" sweating cannot have been true, due to a "peculiar medical condition" which left him unable to sweat. He told the BBC: "I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenalin in the Falkland's War when I was shot at and I simply… it was almost impossible for me to sweat."
As of October 2025 Mountbatten-Windsor has been formally stripped of his royal titles and is no longer a working member of the British royal family.
The arrest, on 19 February 2026, has taken place on Mountbatten-Windsor’s 66th birthday.
Cosmopolitan UK has contacted Buckingham Palace for comment.
Harriet Hall is an award-winning journalist and the Features Director at Cosmopolitan. Most recently she was awarded Best Feature for her investigation into Andrew Tate and online misogyny at the 2023 Write to End Violence Against Women awards and the BSME for Best Lifestyle Journalist in 2022 for her work covering women’s safety, women's health, politics and pop culture. As a journalist of over a decade, her work has seen her interview celebrities from Zendaya to Zac Effron and politicians including Jeremy Corbyn (just five days before the 2017 general election); report on fashion weeks and take on stunts in the name of feminism. She has written for a range of publications including The Independent where she ran the lifestyle desk for four years, Evening Standard, Vogue, BBC News and Stylist. Harriet also regularly appears across numerous platforms to discuss her work, from Sky News to Radio 4 Woman’s Hour and on panels such as at the prestigious Woman of the World Festival. Her first book ‘She: A Celebration of 100 Renegade Women’ was published by Headline Home in 2018 and you can find her Tweeting, Instagramming and on Linkedin when she isn’t curled up on the sofa with a good book and the smallest dog in the world.
