Graham Satchell
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Syria: thousands celebrate 'Victory Day'
This is a man who came to the UK as a student from China, worked at university and then set up a couple of businesses and then started forming what is described as a close relationship with Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. He was banned from the UK in March last year because the Home Secretary at the time was worried that he was a threat to national security. He appealed that ban.
Global News Podcast
Syria: thousands celebrate 'Victory Day'
A series of judges considered that appeal and rejected it. has not been allowed back into the UK.
Global News Podcast
Syria: thousands celebrate 'Victory Day'
This man was stopped at a port and his laptop was taken, his electronic devices and material was downloaded from that. And one of the documents on there was a letter written by one of Prince Andrew's most senior advisers And it says outside of his closest internal confidence, you sit at the very top of a tree that many, many people would like to be on.
Global News Podcast
Syria: thousands celebrate 'Victory Day'
So the judges say during this period of time, Prince Andrew was vulnerable to influence. So perhaps we should explain why Prince Andrew used to be a working member of the royal family. But then he had a relationship, a friendship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. He defended that relationship in a rather calamitous BBC interview.
Global News Podcast
Syria: thousands celebrate 'Victory Day'
and then was stopped from being a working member of the royal family and suffered financially as a consequence. So the judges in this case are saying it's obvious that the pressures on the Duke could make him vulnerable to the misuse of that sort of influence. They're talking about the influence of this Chinese businessman.
Global News Podcast
Syria: thousands celebrate 'Victory Day'
He says that he was just a legitimate Chinese businessman trying to foster relations between Chinese businesses and British businesses. And that he claims that you can't sort of really do business in China unless you have some sort of relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.
Global News Podcast
Syria: thousands celebrate 'Victory Day'
The Home Office say that effectively that's rubbish and that he was being covert and deceptive about his full relationship with the Chinese Communist Party and they considered him to be a threat to national security.
Global News Podcast
Syria: thousands celebrate 'Victory Day'
He was. He had a very significant role and a valued member, I think, as far as the government was concerned, because he used to go on trade envoys all around the world. And it was considered by his brother, the king, in the end, that he could no longer play an active role. Graham Satchell talking to Bernadette Kehoe.