A loan to keep the case out of court doesn’t quite add up to ‘thoughts and prayers to Epstein’s victims’. Working with the police might be a start
“I could have worse tags than ‘Air Miles Andy’,” the then Prince Andrew once reflected. “Although I don’t know what they are!” I think it’s safe to say he does now.
Almost all senior members of the royal family are biologically capable of sweating, and what really brought them out in a cold one four years ago was the thought of this honking liability testifying in a New York courtroom. So they paid millions upon millions to make sure it didn’t happen. The late Virginia Giuffre’s civil case alleging that the former prince abused her on three occasions in London, New York and the US Virgin Islands was never heard, because the late queen seems to have decided that it shouldn’t be at almost any cost. (Andrew denied all claims of wrongdoing.) And yet, as many of us predicted at the time, this would never be the end of it, and the royal family are now playing a failing game of catch-up with the institution’s own actions. Andrew’s de-princing – an attempt to keep it all in-house – already hasn’t worked.
The Windsors are incredibly tight with their own money and have spent generations in arguments and internecine sulks about how it is spread around. Before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepped away from their roles, money rows were a big part of Harry’s but also William’s friction with their father, now king. The idea that this bunch would fork over a reported $12m, plus seven figures of Andrew’s legal costs, without some fairly frank family discussions is just bollocks. Yet they clung to their public silence. They shielded him from what lesser mortals would know as the consequences of their alleged actions. This is proving to be extremely consequential for them.
