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Berry is said to have made Cash aware of the meeting with the CCP official via voice note. Cash responded in a string of messages, saying: “You’re in spy territory now.”
According to a witness statement by deputy national security adviser Matthew Collins, Alex is believed to be an “agent of the Chinese state” who was working for an organisation that was a front for the Ministry of State Security, China’s intelligence services.
Collins said in his statement that he doubted a senior Chinese official would meet with Berry unless the CCP thought by doing so they could obtain useful information.
“It is highly unlikely that one of the most senior officials in China would meet with Mr Berry unless the Chinese state considered him to be someone who could obtain valuable information,” he said.
Cai led a delegation to meet British officials in May 2018, including the Duke of York, then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Scotland’s former first minister, Nicola Sturgeon.
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Prince Andrew travelled some weeks later to China, where he held meetings with both Cai and Xi. The duke told Cai and other senior CCP members during a June 2018 meeting that he hoped to boost Sino-British co-operation in technology, according to Chinese state media.
A third meeting between Cai and Prince Andrew took place in April 2019, where the pair said that “jointly building a ‘golden era’ in China-UK relations has become a consensus among the two governments”, according to a post on China’s official government website.
It will be a further embarrassment for Prince Andrew, who has been scrutinised over his links to China and is facing increasing pressure over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the paedophile and financier who died in US custody in 2019.
Prince Andrew was revealed last December to have forged a close friendship with Yang Tengbo, a suspected Chinese spy who inserted himself into the highest circles of the British establishment.
A High Court judge ruled Yang had formed an “unusual degree of trust” with the Duke of York, having been invited to the royal’s birthday party in 2020 and having helped set up the Chinese branch of Prince Andrew’s Pitch@Palace initiative.
Suspected Chinese spy Yang Tengbo and Prince Andrew.
Pitch@Palace, an entrepreneurial charity launched by the Duke of York in 2014, disintegrated after revelations about his friendship with Epstein, although its global operations continued for some time afterwards.
Chinese government posts seen by The Telegraph claim that Cai praised Prince Andrew’s charity in all three of their meetings in 2018 and 2019, stating in one that Pitch@Palace “had supported nearly 2000 entrepreneurial projects around the world, with its influence growing”.
Previous reports alleged that Prince Andrew also sent birthday letters to Xi as part of a “communication channel” with the Chinese president assisted by Yang.
Prince Andrew and King Charles at a vigil for the late Queen Elizabeth II at the Palace of Westminster in London in 2022.Credit: AP
Fresh details about the Duke’s dealings in Beijing will likely add to pressure on King Charles to strip him of his remaining royal privileges.
The UK government is also facing renewed scrutiny over its relationship with Beijing following the publication of crucial evidence at the centre of the collapsed spy trial and criticism from the head of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum.
In his annual address, McCallum said the security service had worked “very hard” to make convictions possible and revealed that the security service had also intervened to stop a further threat from China in the past week.
Prince Andrew with Virginia Roberts (Giuffre) in 2001 and Jeffrey Epstein’s then personal assistant, Ghislaine Maxwell (right).
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It came after ministers released witness statements on Wednesday by Collins, on which the spy trial hinged and which have since become the source of a row between the government and the Crown Prosecution Service.
The statements show that Collins refrained from describing China as a threat to national security – which was required for the trial to go ahead – but did raise the alarm over “large-scale espionage operations” against the UK by Beijing.
The Telegraph has been told that Berry’s legal team recruited an academic to cast doubt on the likelihood of him meeting with Cai in Beijing while he was working as a teacher.
Professor Kerry Brown, the director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London, submitted expert analysis for the defence suggesting that senior CCP officials such as Cai were inaccessible.
Prince Andrew was approached for comment.
The Telegraph, London
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