One of Queen Elizabeth’s closest advisers was ousted from the Palace at the behest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after he warned the monarch that her son’s business dealings risked damaging the Royal Family, Whitehall sources have claimed.

Sir Christopher Geidt – who was once described as one of the few people around the Queen ‘willing to say boo to a goose’ – spent ten years as the late Queen’s private secretary until he was forced to leave in 2017 after a power struggle in the royal household.

Sources have revealed that in 2019 – by which time he had entered the House of Lords as Baron Geidt and had been appointed a Permanent Lord-in-waiting (a peer who holds office in the royal household) – Lord Geidt was contacted by highly placed informants who warned him about Andrew’s business dealings with Russian oligarchs.

One of the sources said: ‘He said that he would pass on the information to his old colleagues at the Palace, but that he had long been aware of these issues and he had attempted to raise them before, “But the Queen just doesn’t want to know”. It seems clear that Andrew played a role in his departure in 2017.’

The revelation is the latest suggestion that damaging intelligence about Andrew could have been suppressed by the royal household for years because of the Queen’s affection for her second son.

Last week, The Mail on Sunday revealed that King Charles was warned as long ago as 2019 that the Royal Family’s name was being ‘abused’ by Andrew’s business associations.

A whistleblower told the Palace in an email that the former Duke had secret financial links to controversial millionaire financier David Rowland, who was exploiting his royal links.

The whistleblower, who had knowledge of Andrew’s business dealings with Mr Rowland, sent an email to Charles, then Prince of Wales, warning of ‘David Rowland’s abuse of the Royal Family’.

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Sir Christopher Geidt pictured attending a service in 2017 as the then private secretary to Queen Elizabeth II

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The Queen and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor pictured attending a service at St Mary the Virgin Church in Hillington, Sandringham in 2020

Sir Craig Oliver, director of communications for David Cameron when he was Prime Minister, has revealed that in 2011, when questions were raised about Andrew’s trade envoy role following this newspaper’s publication of a photo of him with 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, he joined a meeting ‘with a senior adviser to the Queen’, who is understood to be Lord Geidt.

Sir Craig said ‘the bulk of the conversation with the adviser was about Prince Andrew, who was starting to appear in the media for spending more time on louche holidays than he was executing his official duties as UK trade envoy’.

He added: ‘The Palace official’s sentences were littered with euphemisms that were – in their own way – devastating.

‘He said that we could all agree that the Duke of York’s public role had not been a “smooth ride”.

‘On one level there had been the “fluff” of him helping to sell bits of Britain, but we all knew he was ‘not biddable’.

‘Unlike the Duke of Kent – who had been “superb” – his performance had been “patchy” and he tended to ‘rub the fur the wrong way’.

‘After this gentle demolition, he concluded that perhaps it was time to announce that after “ten good years” Prince Andrew was leaving the role.

‘I told him Andrew going would be a good thing, but the Press attention may mean that we couldn’t control events.

‘The man from the Palace wanted to make clear that he understood the story could grow, but that his strategy meant we could ‘get through it with dignity’.

‘Looking back on this I see the seeds of the full crisis we are now witnessing. For “dignity” read, “don’t rock the boat”.’

A source close to Lord Geidt declined to comment.