High Court judge allows Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to be called in fraud trial
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor can be called to give evidence in a High Court fraud trial involving allegations that a Turkish businessman misled a former client over a £750,000 payment made in 2019. The ruling places a prominent name inside a case that already carries serious allegations about money, influence and the handling of a wealthy client’s assets.
The dispute centers on Nebahat Isbilen, a Turkish national who says her former adviser, Selman Turk, misled her over the payment made to Mountbatten-Windsor. Mountbatten-Windsor repaid the money, and there is no suggestion of wrongdoing by him. Even so, the court has now opened the door for Turk to ask questions of a witness he says is relevant to his defence.
One sentence in the judgment captures the pressure now sitting on the case: fairness to the defendant outweighed the discomfort of drawing a public figure into the witness box.
Why the court decided Turk should have access to that evidence
Justice Adam Johnson said Turk should be allowed to rely on a witness summary and seek to call evidence from Mountbatten-Windsor because the allegations are serious both on their own terms and in light of their wider impact. In civil fraud litigation, the court does not assess only whether a payment was made. It also examines motive, instructions, communications and whether the disputed transfer can be explained by the parties’ own account of events.
Johnson added that a witness summons will likely be needed to compel Mountbatten-Windsor to give evidence. That is a practical reflection of how contentious the issue has become: a witness can be sought, but attendance is another matter entirely when the person in question is a former duke involved in a public dispute over payments connected to a family crisis in Turkey.
The judge said it was highly unlikely that a person in Mountbatten-Windsor’s position would wish voluntarily to provide a witness statement and give evidence at a trial in public proceedings involving payments made by the wife of a man described as a political prisoner in Turkey. The statement goes to the heart of the evidential problem in the case. If a payment was made because Isbilen believed Mountbatten-Windsor could help her husband, then the reason for the transfer becomes central to whether Turk acted dishonestly or merely facilitated a transaction he says had a legitimate explanation.
Isbilen’s allegation and the money at the center of the dispute
Isbilen says she wanted help moving her assets out of Turkey after her politician husband was jailed. Lawyers for her have previously told the court that tens of millions of her funds had been misappropriated, and that Turk failed to explain where the money had gone. Those allegations place the £750,000 transfer inside a wider dispute about trust, control and the movement of wealth across borders.
In that setting, the payment to Mountbatten-Windsor is not a side detail. It is one transaction among what Isbilen describes as a much broader loss of assets. Turk’s position, as Johnson recorded, has long been that the £750,000 was made on Isbilen’s own accord because she believed Mountbatten-Windsor could help with her husband. The competing accounts create a familiar fraud trial problem: the same transfer can look like a legitimate instruction in one version of events and a misleading use of influence in another.
The outcome will turn on evidence, not reputation. Public interest will follow the case because of the names involved, but the legal questions remain narrowly tied to intent, authority and the purpose of the payment.
Public scrutiny and the burden of proving a defense
For Turk, the ruling matters because it gives him a route to present his own case using evidence he considers relevant and material. Civil fraud cases often turn on documents and witness testimony that can corroborate one side’s version while undermining the other. If a party believes a transfer was made for a specific reason, the surrounding communications can become decisive.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s role in the case appears limited to giving evidence about the circumstances of the payment, not as a defendant. Still, the possibility of a witness summons suggests the court may need to decide not only what evidence is useful, but how far it should go in compelling testimony from someone outside the dispute.
The November trial will test more than one transaction. It will test whether the court accepts Turk’s explanation for the payment, whether Isbilen’s account of misappropriation holds, and how much weight can be placed on the role Mountbatten-Windsor may have played in the background to the transfer. For now, the judge’s ruling leaves the former duke potentially within reach of the courtroom and leaves Turk with a clearer path to argue that the payment needs to be seen in context.