Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been served with a summons to give evidence in a £40m High Court trial against a Turkish businessman, with the former duke likely required to divulge significant details of his finances.
Mountbatten-Windsor is caught in a lawsuit brought by Nebahat İşbilen, a Turkish national, who is suing her former adviser Selman Turk, claiming he misled her over a £750,000 payment made to Mountbatten-Windsor in 2019, which was later paid back, as well as the transfer of her wider wealth.
Turk denies dishonesty and last week made a late bid to be allowed to call Mountbatten-Windsor to give evidence at the trial, subsequently approved by Justice Adam Johnson.
Virgin Media O2 cutting thousands of jobs to save costs
Up to 4,000 jobs could be affected as the flailing company attempts to slash outgoings in a bid to save £800m by 2029.
What you need to know
- Virgin Media O2 has built up £22bn in debt.
- CEO Lutz Schüler said in the light of its financial struggles, “doing what we’ve always done is not an option”.
- Currently employing 15,000 people, could cut as many as 4,000 jobs, an inside source told .
- The aim is to reduce the company’s wage bill by 30 per cent.
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What will this mean for customers?
The majority of job losses will be in non customer-facing roles, the company suggested.
Virgin Media O2 has also decided to scrap planned upgrades, including its fibre broadband rollout, to try to reduce costs even further.
Prospect, one of the unions which represents staff, billed the upcoming redundancies as “disappointing and very unsettling”.
Major study into ‘forever chemicals’ in our bodies launched
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has set out to understand more about the health impacts of PFAS, known as forever chemicals.
How will it work?
Dr Edward Wynne-Evans, a director at the UKHSA, told BBC Radio 4 he hopes the study will reveal “what different levels of exposure mean for an individual’s long-term health”.
What are the impacts of PFAS?
They do not break down in the environment and two types have already been banned for cancer risks.
For these, PFOA and PFOS, known risks also include raised cholesterol, lower antibodies and impacts on the thyroid.
This summer, blood testing in the Lancashire town of Thornton -Cleveleys, near a major chemical factory, found elevated PFOA levels.
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The help available for first-time buyers, rated
The Government’s Your First Home scheme won’t launch until the spring but others are currently available.
Here is what might work best for you.
The scheme will see first-time buyers buy a new-build property with a small deposit, backed by a 20 per cent equity loan.
Housing developers will contribute to fund the scheme, which will have an earnings cap.
Experts warn that such a small deposit could mean buyers will have limited savings.
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Lifetime and first-time buyer ISA
The Lifetime ISA allows people to receive a 25 per cent bonus on their savings up to £1,000 per tax year.
The Government also confirmed first-time buyers will have access to a new savings product called the first-time buyer ISA from April 2029.
It will replace the existing LISA for new savers and will allow them to save up to £4,000 a year with a 25 per cent government bonus that will be paid upon withdrawal towards a home worth £450,000, with the maximum value of the bonus capped at £20,000.
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Other options on offer
- Shared ownership: Purchase a share of the property’s value, and then pay the rest in rent, as well as a monthly service charge and ground rent.
- Low-deposit schemes offered by developers: Many developers offer help towards people’s deposits. But experts warned buyers should not be tempted to stretch for a bigger home than they can afford.
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From mogging to friendslop – words of the year revealed
Collins English Dictionary has unveiled its hotly debated top words of 2026, with Gen Z slang, influenced by social media and the manosphere, coming through into the mainstream.
Uses of mogging increased 210 per cent this year.
Mogging the other words
Anything can be mogged now.
Mary O’Neill, who works at Collins, told the term was “adopted by ‘looksmaxxers’, basically to say they were better and more handsome and more muscular than anyone else”.
It means “the act of outshining or outperforming someone or something” and was partly popularised by manosphere figures like Clavicular.
What else was on the shortlist?
- Aside from word of the year mogging, the other shortlisted words included bixie, carspreading, p(doom) and Manchesterism.
- Manchesterism refers to the political philosophy opined by Andy Burnham.
- And, depressingly, p(doom) is the estimate of how likely it is that AI will bring about the collapse of civilisation.
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Hair gets shorter, cars get bigger
- Bixie refers to the popular haircut between a bob and a pixie.
- Carspreading means “the tendency of manufacturers to build cars that are longer, wider and heavier”.
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Why job satisfaction across UK is at a record low
Analysis by the Resolution Foundation think-tank found that pay and flexibility have become key issues employees have with their working arrangements.
The key findings
The study found a significant decline in satisfaction at work among the UK population.
Job satisfaction fell from 81 per cent in 2015 to just 74 per cent a decade later, the lowest figure ever recorded in the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey.
The number of people who reported being interested in their job or having the sense that they had opportunity for progression was also down.
Sir John Curtice, co-editor of the BSA report, suggested it has become more important for employers “to provide jobs that are both financial rewarding and have flexible work hours” in order to produce happier workers.
What does this mean?
Hannah Slaughter, of the Resolution Foundation, said: “This ‘dissatisfaction drain’ is self-evidently bad for workers, but it also doesn’t bode well for productivity and labour supply.”
Witness summaries outline the potential evidence a party in proceedings believes a witness could give when they are unable to get them to get a witness statement from them.
The BBC reported that King Charles’s brother, who was stripped of his titles last year, had today been served with the summons, although it is understood Mountbatten-Windsor has the legal right to challenge the request.
Ahead of the civil trial, expected to begin later this month, The i Paper takes a look at three things we could learn from the former prince’s evidence.
How did the ex-Prince meet Turk?
Mountbatten-Windsor had only known alleged fraudster Turk for at least six months before he received the disputed payments from him, the Sunday Telegraph reported in 2022.
He was introduced to Turk in the summer of 2019 at Windsor Castle, the paper reported, where they held subsequent meetings. He also received an award from Mountbatten-Windsor, then Prince Andrew, at his Pitch@Palace event for entrepreneurs in November 2019.
It was nine days after this event that Mountbatten-Windsor received £750,000 from İşbilen’s account.
Mountbatten-Windsor later reached a settlement with İşbilen, leaving no outstanding claims against him, according to a written submission from her lawyers.
It was only through the legal proceedings brought by İşbilen that Mountbatten-Windsor’s connection with Turk was revealed. The former Prince has repeatedly denied to comment on the case and his associations with Turk.
His witness statement will be the first time he has publicly spoken about his relationship with Turk and how he was introduced.
Did Mountbatten-Windsor know he was receiving money?
It still remains unclear whether Mountbatten-Windsor was aware of the money entering his personal bank account and whether he knew the full extent of what it was for.
İşbilen is the wife of a former leading politician in Turkey, who is now described by her as a political prisoner, remaining in their homeland.
Justice Adam Johnson, in last month’s proceedings approving Mountbatten-Windsor’s input, said it had “long been” Turk’s case that the £750,000 payment was made of İşbilen’s own accord as she thought the former duke could help with her husband.
Lawyers for İşbilen disputed this and previously told the court that tens of millions of her funds had been misappropriated, with Turk failing to explain where the money had gone.
Evidence provided by Mountbatten-Windsor would be “highly relevant and highly probative”, according to Turk’s lawyers.
The former duke’s own finances
Much is still unknown about Mountbatten-Windsor’s own finances and how he has funded his lifestyle while having no visible means of financial support. For years his only declared source of income has been a Royal Navy pension for his service between 1979 and 2001, which amounts to around £20,000. This is despite in 2014 acquiring a lodge in Switzerland for a reported £18m.
Mountbatten-Windsor only received official payments from the public purse as a working royal between 1978 and 2010, with the last year totalling £249,000.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s statements in the trial are likely to offer far greater insight into his finances and wealth than available before.
Turk denies any wrongdoing, while there is also no suggestion of wrongdoing on Mountbatten-Windsor’s part.