London
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Pressure is intensifying on Britain’s Prince Andrew, who has didn’t quell the scandal over his affiliation with disgraced financier and convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein.
There has been an avalanche of headlines in latest days, in the run as much as the publication of a posthumous memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” by his accuser Virginia Giuffre. The royal household may have hoped Andrew’s choice on Friday to surrender the use of his royal titles and honors would put an finish to the saga. But it has not.
Once celebrated as a embellished struggle hero, Andrew, the brother of King Charles III, has been thrown into the royal wilderness, not even invited to spend Christmas along with his household at their Sandringham property, in keeping with a royal supply.
Andrew insists he by no means met Giuffre, who accused the prince of sexually assaulting her whereas she was a teen, and has at all times denied accusations of wrongdoing towards him. Critics say the royal household and UK authorities have to go additional to carry the disgraced royal to account. Giuffre died by suicide in April at the age of 41.
How shut have been Prince Andrew and Epstein?
Prince Andrew was certainly one of the many high-profile people to affiliate with Epstein. Andrew has mentioned the pair have been launched by Epstein’s then girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell in 1999. He later mentioned they met “infrequently,” including that their encounters have been “probably no more than only once or twice a year.”
He additionally admitted to staying at a number of properties belonging to the disgraced financier, who was discovered lifeless in his New York jail cell in 2019 whereas awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking costs.
Andrew is understood to have attended a charity fundraiser at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida in 2000, at which Maxwell was additionally current, in keeping with photographs published in the Palm Beach Post at the time.
Months later, Epstein and Maxwell mingled with royalty at a Windsor Castle celebration hosted by Queen Elizabeth II to mark Andrew’s fortieth birthday, in addition to Princess Anne’s fiftieth, the Queen Mother’s a hundredth and Princess Margaret’s seventieth. Andrew later invited the couple again to Windsor in 2006 for his daughter Princess Beatrice’s extravagant 18th birthday ball, in keeping with Britain’s The Sun on Sunday newspaper.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded responsible to 2 state prostitution costs and registered as a intercourse offender in a deal that allowed him to keep away from federal costs.
When did Andrew lower ties with Epstein?
The long-running friendship has raised persistent questions about Andrew’s judgment, given his place at the time as a working royal, a standing he gave up in 2019.
In her e book, Giuffre particulars the three events she allegedly had intercourse with the prince – in London, New York and on Epstein’s Caribbean island, Little St. James. She claimed that Andrew appropriately guessed she was underage in the United States once they have been launched and that Epstein gave her $15,000 “for servicing the man the tabloids called ‘Randy Andy.’”
She additionally repeated a declare from a 2015 sworn declaration that the third encounter was “an orgy” on Epstein’s island with the financier and “approximately eight other girls” who “appeared to be under the age of 18 and didn’t really speak English.”
Andrew reached an out-of-court settlement with Giuffre in 2022 after she filed a civil go well with towards him in New York. While he didn’t admit wrongdoing, Andrew did acknowledge Giuffre’s struggling as a sufferer of intercourse trafficking.
The royal has at all times denied all accusations towards him and insisted that he by no means witnessed or suspected any of the habits of which Epstein was accused. In a now-infamous BBC interview in 2019, Andrew mentioned that he had severed all ties with Epstein in 2010.
However, a newly reported e mail from 2011 has known as that declare into query. Earlier this month, The Mail on Sunday and The Sun on Sunday newspapers reported that Andrew appeared to succeed in out to Epstein as soon as extra, telling him to “keep in close touch” and that they have been “in this together.” Andrew has not responded to the reviews and NCS has reached out for remark.
Meanwhile, London’s Metropolitan Police has mentioned it’s “actively looking into” a Mail on Sunday report that Andrew in 2011 requested a police officer assigned to him as a bodyguard to dig up grime on Giuffre. A royal supply informed NCS on Monday that the allegation needs to be “examined in an appropriate way.”
What did the royal household know and when?
It stays unclear what the royal household, or different members of the royal family, knew about the extent of Andrew’s relationship with Epstein, and once they knew it.
The 2019 BBC interview was filmed at Buckingham Palace, however the depth of the family’s information of his friendship with Epstein is unsure.
Both his workers and his safety element would have been conscious of his actions at the time he related to Epstein. But the royal household has not commented publicly on any of that.
Why has Andrew not been stripped of his titles?
Andrew’s habits put King Charles in a troublesome place: successfully banish his brother as a royal outcast or permit the regular drumbeat of detrimental headlines to danger additional reputational harm to the establishment.
Andrew had already stepped again from his frontline duties in 2019 and was stripped of his army titles and charity patronages by the late Queen in 2022. But the palace clearly felt one thing extra needed to be completed to halt the seemingly weekly drip-feed of salacious headlines.
So, on Friday, Andrew introduced that he would cease utilizing his Duke of York title in addition to relinquishing different titles and honors bestowed upon him by the royal household over the years. (He was often known as the Earl of Inverness and Baron Killyleagh, a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order and as a Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.)
Andrew mentioned the choice was made in session with King Charles, in addition to different members of the household, as a result of the “continued accusations” have been distracting from the household’s work. “I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first,” he added.
And there’s the rub – holding it in the household means he didn’t quit the titles; he merely gave up use of them, and so technically he nonetheless holds all of them.
Andrew was made a duke, the highest rank in Britain’s system of hereditary peerage, when he married ex-wife Sarah Ferguson in 1986. Removing the title requires an act of parliament, which might be a protracted course of.
But critics, together with Giuffre’s brother, say there must be higher accountability. While Andrew was identified formally as the Duke of York, it’s not a title that many exterior the UK could be accustomed to and finally the standing of prince is the just one that issues.
Andrew grew to become a prince robotically at delivery, as the son of the then reigning monarch, and that standing can solely be modified if King Charles points a directive referred to as a Letters Patent.
Andrew additionally stays eighth in line to the British throne however could be removed by laws. However, doing this might require the consent of Commonwealth nations round the world, which might take time. The final time this protocol was used was when Edward VIII abdicated in 1936.
Andrew lives along with his ex-wife at Royal Lodge, a 30-room mansion on the Windsor property, exterior London, regardless of reported makes an attempt by Charles to steer him to relocate. He secured a 75-year lease on the property in 2003.
A royal supply mentioned final week that he would proceed to dwell there beneath a personal tenancy settlement with the Crown Estate, which manages the royal household’s land and property holdings. Profits from the property are paid to the British authorities. But additional outrage was ignited after it was revealed on Tuesday that the phrases of the rental settlement successfully imply Andrew has by no means paid hire on the lodging.
A Downing Street spokesperson mentioned that the lease required an preliminary one-off cost of £1 million ($1.34 million). Additionally, he was required to pay an additional £7.5 million ($10 million) to cowl refurbishments which have been accomplished in 2005, in keeping with a National Audit Office report.
After these upfront prices, the lease states he has since paid an annual hire of “one peppercorn (if demanded),” a duplicate of the Royal Lodge leasehold settlement confirmed.
The settlement additionally features a clause that the Crown Estate must pay Andrew £558,000 ($743,600) if he gave up the property early.
“The National Audit Office reviewed the lease arrangements for Royal Lodge in 2005 and in its report, which was published at that time, concluded that the Crown Estate does not have any special procedures when negotiating agreements with the Royal Family,” the Downing Street spokesperson mentioned. “An independent evaluation concluded that the transaction with Prince Andrew and Royal Lodge was appropriate.”
Regardless, in the intervening days, there was mounting strain on Andrew to go away the property, which sits in Windsor Great Park near a chapel utilized by the royals.
Lawmaker Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Commons Treasury Committee, mentioned Tuesday: “Where money flows, particularly where taxpayers’ money is involved, or taxpayers’ interests are involved, Parliament has a responsibility to have a light shine upon that, and we need to have answers.”
Senior Conservative politician Robert Jenrick informed the BBC it was “about time Prince Andrew took himself off to live in private” and that he didn’t suppose “the taxpayer in any way should be footing the bill for him to live in luxury homes ever again.”
Are there different scandals involving Andrew?
Prince Andrew has additionally faced livid questions over his enterprise offers with China and his contact with an alleged Chinese spy. Court paperwork revealed the disgraced royal’s apparently shut relationship with Yang Tengbo.
In a tribunal listening to in December 2024 that upheld an earlier decision to bar Yang from the UK, it was revealed that Yang was approved to behave on Prince Andrew’s behalf throughout enterprise conferences with potential Chinese buyers in the UK, and that he was invited to Andrew’s sixtieth birthday celebration in 2020. Throughout a authorities investigation into the relationship, Yang has denied any wrongdoing.
Andrew’s workplace mentioned at the time that the prince ceased his relationship with Yang after receiving authorities recommendation.
Meanwhile, contemporary paperwork launched this yr revealed that Andrew despatched birthday needs annually to Chinese chief Xi Jinping. A witness assertion from a former aide to the prince revealed that Andrew had a “communication channel” with China by way of Yang however insisted that there was “nothing to hide.”
It’s not simply the British monarchy that faces accusations of inaction. Many are urgent the UK authorities on why it hasn’t moved to deal with the persistent drawback of what to do with Andrew.
That got here to a head on Tuesday when the Scottish National Party (SNP) tabled a movement calling “on the government to take legislative steps to remove the dukedom granted to Prince Andrew.”
A brand new YouGov ballot printed on the similar day revealed that 4 in 5 Britons would help Andrew being formally stripped of his dukedom.
In response to the SNP’s transfer, a Downing Street spokesperson mentioned it was a matter for the Speaker of the House of Commons and reiterated that “we support the judgment of the royal family in this matter to date, and Prince Andrew has already confirmed he won’t be using his titles.”
On Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer mentioned he supported “proper scrutiny” of all Crown properties in response to requires a parliamentary inquiry.