Spotty Rowland lender fined £10m over Qatar claims
Bank owned by friend of Prince Andrew fined £10 million for allegedly conspiring to wage economic war against Qatar
A bank owned by a friend of Prince Andrew has been fined £10 million for allegedly conspiring to wage an economic war against Qatar.
Banque Havilland, a private bank based in Luxembourg, was hit by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) sanction after the watchdog found it attempted to use manipulative trading strategies to devalue the Qatari riyal.
The bank is controlled by the Rowland family, including David ‘Spotty’ Rowland, a Conservative Party donor famous for allegedly funding Prince Andrew.
Rowland’s son Edmund, the bank’s former British boss, was hit by a financial services ban and fined £352,000. The FCA fined and removed ex-branch manager David Weller and employee Vladimir Bolelyy.
The bank and Rowland have appealed. Edmund Rowland said: ‘I fully refute the allegations made by the FCA. I challenge them to the independent court.’
Helping Hand: David ‘Spotty’ Rowland is famous for allegedly bankrolling Prince Andrew
The FCA said that in 2017 the bank had prepared trading strategies to devalue Qatar’s currency against rivals, in order to create a false or misleading impression about the Qatari bond market, with the intention of presenting the document to Qatar’s rivals which might put economic pressure on it.
It did not believe the strategy was ever implemented, but said such a strategy could have been a criminal offense had it taken place in the UK.
Therese Chambers, chief of enforcement at the FCA, said the bank’s conduct actively encouraged the commission of financial crime, providing ideas for manipulative trading to someone she believed had the political motivation to potentially be interested in such ideas. Edmund Rowland’s misconduct was intentional.”
She added: “Weller claimed to have believed the other two were joking, but as a senior manager he acted recklessly.”
David Rowland is a Guernsey native who has been dubbed the ‘tax haven magnate’ – and acted as Prince Andrew’s financial adviser when he attended Princess Eugenie’s wedding in 2018.
In 2017, he reportedly paid off a £1.5 million loan for Andrew.
He owns a palatial estate, Havilland Hall, where in 2005 the Prince unveiled a bronze statue of Rowland smoking a cigar.