Bank owned by friend of Prince Andrew fined £10m for ‘plot to undermine Qatar’

A bank owned by a controversial Tory donor who has links to Prince Andrew has been fined £10m for allegedly plotting to undermine Qatar’s currency.

Banque Havilland, a private bank headquartered in Luxembourg, was hit with the sanction after the City watchdog ruled it had drawn up trading strategies to devalue the Qatari Riyal and harm the Gulf state’s economy.

Edmund Rowland, the bank’s former UK boss, David Weller, a former senior manager, and Vladimir Bolelyy, an-ex London-based employee, were all handed fines totalling more than £400,000 and banned from working in the UK’s financial services industry by the regulator as part of the investigation.

Banque Havilland, Mr Rowland, and Mr Bolelyy have appealed the findings to an independent tribunal.

Mr Rowland is the son of property tycoon and Conservative Party donor David “Spotty” Rowland, who owns Banque Havilland.

The Tory donor is friends with the Duke of York and reportedly paid off a £1.5m loan for Prince Andrew in 2017.

Mr Rowland declined to comment at the time on the alleged loan repayment and a spokesman for Prince Andrew said at the time that the Duke was “entitled to a degree of privacy in conducting his entirely legitimate personal financial affairs, on which all appropriate accounting measures are undertaken and all taxes duly paid.”

The Duke allegedly used his royal connections to help his friend Mr Rowland open a bank for the super-rich in Monaco, Bloomberg previously reported.

Neither commented on the allegation that Prince Andrew helped Mr Rowland establish a bank in Monaco.

The FCA is taking no action against David Rowland, who was mentioned around 80 times in the report as the ultimate owner of the bank.

David Rowland, who was given the nickname “Spotty” thanks to the lingering acne he had when starting out in his career, is appealing to the independent tribunal about how he is characterised in the notice.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said that between September and November 2017, Banque Havilland drew up trading strategies aimed at devaluing Qatar’s currency relative to Middle Eastern rivals.

The regulator said the strategies were aimed at creating a false or misleading impression about the Qatari bond market.

Banque Havilland presented the strategies in a marketing document that it planned to pitch to Qatar's rivals who may want to put economic pressure on it, the FCA said.

The plans drawn up could have been a criminal offence had they taken place in the UK, the watchdog said, though the trades are not thought to have been used by anyone.

Therese Chambers, head of enforcement at the FCA, said: “Banque Havilland’s conduct actively encouraged the commission of financial crime, providing ideas for manipulative trading to someone it saw as having the political motivation to be potentially interested in such ideas.

“The misconduct of Mr Edmund Rowland and Mr Boleyy was deliberate. Mr Weller claimed to have believed that the other two were joking around but as a senior manager he behaved recklessly.

“There was an obvious risk of impropriety and he willingly took that risk without seeking any assurances that things would go no further.”

Edmund Rowland told Bloomberg: “I refute the FCA allegations in full. I am challenging them in the independent tribunal.”

A spokesman for Banque Havilland said: “The bank is disappointed in the decision reached by the FCA and does not accept that it is directly liable for the actions of the individuals implicated in the criticized activity, who have long since left the bank.

“The bank has taken measures to ensure that any consequences will not significantly affect the bank’s financial position.”

The son of a scrap metal dealer, David Rowland grew up in south London and left school without any qualifications.

However, he quickly displayed a flair for business and floated his company on the stock exchange at the age of 23, later becoming a prominent property developer.

Mr Rowland is well known for his close relationships with the Duke of York, who invited him to meet Queen Elizabeth II in Balmoral in the summer of 2010. The 77-year-old also had a front-row seat at the 2018 wedding of Princess Eugenie, the Duke’s daughter.

Mr Rowland owns a palatial estate on Guernsey called Havilland Hall where the Duke of York unveiled a life-size bronze statue of the tycoon smoking a cigar in 2005.