Kunle Adeleye
Prince Andrew is facing new questions about his association with Jeffrey Epstein after emails surfaced claiming he ‘lied’ about it in a BBC Newsnight interview.
Despite the king claiming to have ceased all contact in 2010, a note sent by the late wealthy paedophile and disclosed as part of a legal case in the US showed he was promoting Andrew, 63, as a potential investment in 2011.
Epstein’s victims demanded yesterday night that he talk with the FBI, which he has so far refused to do. It’s unclear whether Andrew, who was seen riding in Windsor today, was aware Epstein had referenced him in the email discussion.
‘It looks that either Epstein was greatly exaggerating his relationship with Prince Andrew or that the duke may not have been totally accurate about when his acquaintance ended,’ said the victims’ agent, US attorney Spencer Kuvin, to the Mirror.
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‘The emails raise serious doubts,’ said one victim who received money through the Epstein victims’ compensation program. ‘How could Jeffrey praise him as an investment if he was no longer in contact with him?’
On August 31, 2011, Epstein sent an email to JP Morgan suggesting Andrew as a potential investment partner since “he is now allowed to make money.”
It was revealed as part of a lawsuit filed by the US Virgin Islands against the bank, which says it was “complicit in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.”
JP Morgan accuses the territory’s leaders of accepting money and favors from Epstein in exchange for turning a blind eye as he molested women on the island in a counterclaim.
Andrew told the BBC’s Emily Maitlis in 2019 that he lost communication with Epstein after meeting him in New York in December 2010.
‘Did you ever see or speak to him again?’ The duke said, ‘No.’
In 2008, Epstein was sentenced to nearly 13 months in prison after being convicted of soliciting a child for prostitution and sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl.
However, after the criminal was released, Prince Andrew maintained his friendship with him.
In 2019, he told the BBC that his friendship with Epstein and the possibilities he was given were “very useful,” and that he didn’t recall the photo of him with his arm around Virginia Roberts – now Virginia Giuffre – “ever being taken.”
Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in jail in 2019.
Epstein’s ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, who was also Andrew’s buddy and appears in the background of the photo of him with Ms Giuffre, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking.
It comes after allegations that the monarch faced being evicted from his monarch Lodge house by his brother, King Charles.
