Britain’s former prince Andrew was Wednesday settling into life on a remote country estate after leaving his home of two decades amid a renewed furore over his links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
King Charles III’s younger brother is under intense pressure to explain his close ties to the late American financier after the US Justice Department released a new batch of documents.
Andrew, 65, who has strenuously denied any wrongdoing, was ousted from his Windsor mansion home, just west of London, earlier than planned, the BBC reported.
His departure under cover of darkness on Monday came after the latest revelations triggered further concern for the royal family, The Sun daily added.
Despite the persistent scandal, Andrew has been frequently pictured out and about on the Windsor estate, which for some time he had stubbornly refused to leave.
“The sight of him plastered on the front pages out riding his horse or driving in his car… amid the continued dripping poison of the Epstein files was just too much,” a royal source told the Daily Mail newspaper.
“He had to be removed from the public eye,” the source added.
Andrew is said now to be living at Wood Farm, the former residence of his late father Prince Philip, on the king’s private estate in Sandringham, a remote corner of rural eastern England, some 150 miles (240 kilometres) north of Windsor.
AFP understands he may make trips back to Windsor as the move is completed.
The move comes as a second alleged Epstein victim claimed through her lawyer that the late US financier had sent her to Britain in 2010 to have sex with Andrew — now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — at the 30-room Royal Lodge.
Thames Valley Police told AFP that “any new information about any such offences will be assessed in line with our established procedures”.
A lawyer’s letter in the DOJ cache also claimed some $250,000 for a female client, an exotic dancer, who alleged that Andrew and Epstein pressured her into having sex with both of them in 2006.
Epstein and Prince Andrew “told my client they wanted to have a threesome…. and they prevailed upon her to engage in various sex acts”, the lawyer said in his letter.
She added that young girls were also hired for the evening, some of whom looked to be about 14.
– Stripped of royal titles –
New revelations have emerged daily from the stockpile of some three million emails and photographs released on Friday.
Earlier documents and a posthumous memoir by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre prompted Charles to strip Andrew of his royal titles last year.
The monarch also ordered him to leave Royal Lodge, where he had lived with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, also tarnished by the Epstein affair.
Ferguson was stripped of her title of duchess and has been left to seek a new home on her own. There was no indication Wednesday as to where she might be living now.
Giuffre, who died by suicide last year, had accused Andrew of sexual assault.
The then-prince paid her a multi-million-pound settlement in 2022 without making any admission of guilt.
Andrew always denied that he ever met Giuffre, claiming that a photograph of him with his arm around her bare midriff was fake.
But another email — written by Epstein’s now imprisoned one-time girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell — appeared to authenticate it.
Apparently referring to Giuffre, whose name is redacted, she wrote in a “draft statement” sent to Epstein in 2015 that in 2001 the then 17-year-old “met a number of friends of mine including Prince Andrew” in London.
“A photograph was taken as I imagine she wanted to show it to friends and family,” Maxwell added.
– ‘Remember the victims’ –
Andrew will reportedly stay at Wood Farm until renovations are completed on his planned permanent residence in Sandringham, the much smaller Marsh Farm.
Other embarrassing disclosures included photos of Andrew kneeling over a clothed woman lying on the ground, and emails inviting Epstein to Buckingham Palace to talk in “private”.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said Andrew should testify before the US Congress about what he knows of Epstein’s crimes.
Andrew stepped back from royal duties in 2019 over his links to Epstein, who died by suicide in jail that year while awaiting trial for sex crimes against minors.
In the royal family’s only public comment on the fresh revelations, Andrew’s younger brother Prince Edward said Tuesday that it was “really important, always, to remember the victims”.
Royal expert Ed Owens told AFP that Charles should go further.
“At the time when popular support for the monarchy is in question and has very much been in decline in the last 5 years, taking a moral stance will do his reign and the monarchy a real favour,” he said.
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