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The alleged Chinese spy linked to Prince Andrew has been publicly named as Yang Tengbo after a judge lifted an anonymity order protecting his identity on Monday.
The 50-year-old Chinese national, who is also known by the Anglicised alias Chris Yang, has been banned from entering Britain on national security grounds since March 2023.
Yang had challenged that decision by the Home Office, an appeal that was rejected last week by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission.
He had developed business links to Prince Andrew and access to a network of other senior British political and business figures, primarily through his company Hampton Group International, which said it focused on “investing in, consulting on and enabling opportunities between China, the UK and the rest of the world”.
The commission’s ruling found that Yang “had been in a position to generate relationships with prominent UK figures and senior Chinese officials that could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the CCP [Chinese Communist party] . . . or the Chinese State”.
Tengbo previously worked with UK drugmaker GSK to manage the fallout of a bribery scandal in China, according to people familiar with the matter.
GSK did not comment.
GSK was introduced to Tengbo by Ron Dennis, the former chief executive of McLaren, one of the people said. Neither Ron Dennis nor McLaren responded to a request for comment.
The anonymity order was reviewed during a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice on Monday, ahead of MPs threatening to use parliamentary privilege to name the individual in the House of Commons.
Yang, previously known only as H6 in the court documents, has already been named on social media and some overseas news sites.
This is a developing story