And not for the first time.
The Duke of York
Maxwell’s jailing for her part in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal has put the spotlight back on Prince Andrew. It comes four months after he settled the US sexual assault case brought by Virginia Giuffre. a woman he claimed he never remembered meeting, but who claims he was forced to have sex with him on three occasions when he was 17 and while being trafficked by Epstein. Andrew’s friendship with Epstein, who was jailed in 2008 for buying an underage girl for prostitution, eventually led to the king’s downfall after a disastrous BBC Newsnight interview in which he failed to apologize for their friendship and which led to to withdraw from public life. His exile ended when the Queen in January stripped him of his HRH title and military patronage ahead of the settlement. Andrew’s actions also attracted unwanted publicity in 2007 when he sold his Sunninghill home for £15m – £3m above the asking price – to Timur Kulibayev, son-in-law of the then president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. There were questions about his dealings with the authoritarian regime after it was later revealed that Andrew’s office tried to secure a crown property near Kensington Palace for Kulibayev at the same time. Buckingham Palace said the sale of Sunninghill Park “was a straight commercial transaction between the trust that owned the house and the trust that bought it”. He added: “There have been no side deals and absolutely no agreement by the Duke of York to benefit otherwise or be bound by any other commercial agreement.”
The Duchess of York
Sarah Ferguson apologized for her friendship with Epstein after it was revealed she allowed the convicted pedophile to pay one of her creditors £15,000. It was a “huge error of judgement” and a “huge mistake”, he admitted. Another mistake was the sting of the “Fake Sheikh” – undercover News of the World reporter Mazher Mahmood – and offered to introduce Prince Andrew, her ex-husband, then a trade envoy, to him for £500,000. “Look after me and I’ll look after you,” he was filmed telling Mahmood, who played the businessman, in 2010. “You’ll get it back tenfold. I can open any door you want.” Andrew knew nothing of the proposed £500,000 deal. The Duchess was “devastated” and “remorseful” after photos, transcripts and videos of her making the offer were published.
The Countess of Wessex
Sophie was another victim of the Fake Sheikh, although there is no indication that she tried to sell access to her husband, Prince Edward. He was humiliated after he was arrested in 2001 while running his PR business. Palace officials will struggle to brush aside alleged disparaging comments the countess made about the likes of then-prime minister Tony Blair and his chancellor Gordon Brown, as well as Prince Charles and Camilla.
Prince Charles
His charities have been the cause of recent headaches. Allegations this week that he accepted €3m in cash from a Qatari sheikh between 2011 and 2015, which was paid to the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Trust, have raised eyebrows, although no wrongdoing is alleged and Clarence House says all correct procedures were followed. However, the Metropolitan police are investigating “cash for honours” claims linked to another of his charities, the Prince’s Foundation. It is claimed he offered to help a Saudi millionaire gain a knighthood and British citizenship in exchange for generous donations. Charles denies knowing anything about cash for prices, but says he will help the police with their enquiries. National Archives documents, revealed this week, relating to a tenancy reform act which became law in 1993, allegedly show Charles lobbying elected ministers to secure an exemption to prevent his own tenants from having the right to buy their own homes. Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST
The Queen
According to documents, the monarch allegedly successfully lobbied the government to change a draft law to hide her “embarrassing” private wealth from the public. Found again in the National Archives, they reportedly reveal that her private lawyer in 1973 lobbied ministers to amend proposed legislation to prevent her shares being made public. Details of the Queen’s lobbying of ministers were revealed in a Guardian investigation last year into the royal family’s use of an arcane parliamentary process known as Queen’s assent to secretly influence the making of British laws. Buckingham Palace and the government say the Queen’s assent is a “purely formal” part of the parliamentary process and is granted by the monarch as a matter of course. The palace said “consent is always given by the monarch when requested by the government” and that “this process does not change the nature of any such bill”.
