The
Saturday read
Andrew
Mountbatten-Windsor
‘Police
need to investigate’: will Andrew be questioned over his relationship with
Epstein?
Caroline
Davies and Alexandra Topping
Voices
around Westminster insist that the role of UK institutions in this most
horrifying of scandals must be now examined. That includes the monarchy.
As calls
for the former prince to cooperate with police become deafening, this may be
the reckoning Andrew cannot outrun
Sat 14
Feb 2026 06.00 GMT
Gordon
Brown is a man who gets into the detail.
In
office, and since then, he has applied his forensic mind to the matters that
concern him. Lately, he has been focused on the Epstein files.
What he
discovered shocked him. There was the immediate anger about the “extent of
betrayal” by his former business secretary, Peter Mandelson, during the global
financial crisis.
But it
was the “the abuse of women by male predators and their enablers – and
Britain’s as yet unacknowledged role” that has left the deepest mark.
He looked
at flight records, examined the evidence and came to a conclusion: Andrew
Mountbatten-Windsor should face police questioning over Jeffrey Epstein.
He’s not
on his own in that conviction.
This
week, voices around Westminster and beyond have insisted the role of UK
institutions in this most horrifying of scandals must be now examined. And that
includes the monarchy.
On
Thursday, cabinet secretary Chris Ward was cornered about the former prince by
Sarah Owen, chair of the Commons women and equalities committee.
Mountbatten-Windsor
was trade envoy to critical countries, including China and Hong Kong, between
2001 and 2011.
Wasn’t it
time for him “to answer both to the police and parliament”, she asked.
MPs can
no longer afford to be deferential when it comes to the royals, Owen told the
Guardian.
“We have
to do this to put faith back into systems where people have lost it,” she said.
“If we don’t it weakens people’s belief in democracy, their trust in politics
as a force for good. That risks us going down to a really dark path.”
Writing
in the New Statesman, Brown referenced a BBC investigation which found many of
Epstein’s private planes had travelled through Stansted and other UK airports,
where women “were transferred from one Epstein plane to another”.
But Brown
had been “told privately” that previous Metropolitan police inquiries “related
to the former Prince Andrew did not properly check vital evidence of flights”.
“The
Stansted revelations alone require them to interview Andrew,” he argued.
Former
Victim’s Commissioner Vera Baird told the Guardian that she had spoken to the
police about Mountbatten-Windsor before the Covid pandemic struck, but was
assured the issue was being investigated thoroughly in the US.
“Clearly,
[Mountbatten-Windsor] is not going to do anything himself. Clearly, there’s a
limit to what the royal family can do,” she said. “So the police need to
investigate.”
Even from
his bolthole in Sandringham, Norfolk, to where he is exiled by his brother,
King Charles, can Mountbatten-Windsor, despite his vociferous denials of any
wrongdoing, still ignore the deafening roars for him to cooperate with any
police investigations, and to testify to the US Congress on what he himself
knew about Epstein?
Thames
Valley police is assessing whether to investigate the apparent sharing of some
documents by Mountbatten-Windsor to Epstein during his time as trade envoy, and
is engaged in discussions with specialist crown prosecutors from the CPS. The
same force is assessing claims a woman was sent to the UK by Epstein for a
sexual encounter with the then prince, which allegedly occurred at his former
Royal Lodge residence in 2010. The woman, who is not British, was in her 20s at
the time. The allegation is separate to the one made by Virginia Giuffre.
As
Mountbatten-Windsor’s past answers over his relationship with Epstein are
apparently blown apart, there has been no response from him.
When,
with titles still intact, the then Prince Andrew told interviewer Emily Maitlis
and 1.7 million BBC Newsnight viewers in 2019 of his Pizza Express in Woking
alibi, and revealed a temporary medical inability to sweat, he would have
expected to be believed, especially as the queen’s son.
Not any
more.
There was
also the matter of that March 2001 photograph, with Mountbatten-Windsor’s hand
seemingly around the bare waist of a 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, who would
later claim she was forced to have sex with the royal, a claim he has always
denied, and said to have been taken in Ghislaine Maxwell’s London Belgravia
mews home.
The March
2001 photograph, with Mountbatten-Windsor’s hand seemingly around the bare
waist of a 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre. Photograph: US Department of
Justice/PA
Asked
about it, he had stared at Maitlis, earnestly. It was difficult, he insisted,
to “prove” it was “faked”, because it was a photograph of a photograph.
“Whether
that’s my hand, or whether that’s the position …” he went on, before
concluding: “I’m afraid to say that I don’t believe that photograph was taken
in the way that has been suggested.”
Was it
taken by Epstein? The then prince said that he had never seen Epstein “with a
camera in my life”.
Yet
Epstein appears to have kept many photographs of people, presumably to utilise
for some purpose at a future date.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s
explanation of that photograph is now robustly questioned by a July 2011 email
from Epstein to his publicist, which states: “yes she was on my plane and yes
she had her picture taken with Andrew”, in an apparent reference to Giuffre.
Maxwell
further strengthens the argument for its authenticity in an email to Epstein in
2015, headed “draft statement”. She appears to write: “In 2001 I was in London
when [redacted] met a number of friends of mine including Prince Andrew. A
photograph was taken as I imagine she wanted to show it to friends and family.”
Another
reason to doubt the photo, Mountbatten-Windsor insisted to Maitlis, was he was
“not one to, as it were, hug and public displays of affection”. Yet, a
photograph recently disclosed of him crouching on all fours, barefoot and
smiling, over an unidentified woman lying on the floor, also casts doubt on
this claim.
What of
another photograph, pivotal to his downfall, and taken in early December 2010,
five months after the financier’s release from prison for soliciting sex with a
minor, showing the two men strolling in New York’s Central Park?
Wielded
as proof of his ongoing relationship with Epstein that conviction,
Mountbatten-Windsor would brush it aside as the final moment of their
friendship.
He had to
show “leadership”, he told Maitlis, and tell Epstein: “That’s it.” It was the
“honourable and right thing to do” face-to-face. Crucially, he insisted, “from
that day forth, I was never in contact with him”.
But a
thank-you email he appears to have written to Epstein on 22 December 2010
reads: “It was great to spend time with my US family. Looking forward to
joining you all again soon.”
Then with
imminent publication by the Mail on Sunday of an article about Andrew, Epstein
and Maxwell, “The Duke” writes to Epstein in February 2011: “It would seem we
are in this together and we will have to rise above it.” Another, in March 2011
reads: “Please make sure that every statement or legal letter states clearly
that I am NOT involved and that I knew and know NOTHING about any of these
allegations. I can’t take any more of this my end.”
These
emails may raise serious questions about the personal integrity of a public
figure, but what of professional integrity.
Emails
between Andrew and Epstein show the former prince sharing information about
potential investments for his friend – all while he was on the government
payroll as UK trade envoy.
When the
anti-monarchy campaign group Republic this week reported Mountbatten-Windsor to
Thames Valley police, its CEO Graham Smith said: “I cannot see any significant
difference between these allegations and those against Peter Mandelson.”
Christmas
Eve 2010, after he has insisted he had no contact, the former duke appears to
forward to Epstein a document including information on investment opportunities
in gold and uranium in Afghanistan.
The
document, specifically prepared by government officials for him, according to
the BBC, references “significant high value mineral deposits” and the
“potential for low cost extraction”, including valuable natural resources such
as marble, gold, iridium, uranium, thorium and possible deposits of oil and
gas. All sent, apparently to Epstein.
Another
email indicates that on 7 October 2010, he sent Epstein details of his official
upcoming trips as trade envoy to Singapore, Vietnam, Shenzhen in China and Hong
Kong, where he was accompanied by business associates of the child sex
offender. After the trip, on 30 November, he appears to have forwarded official
reports of those visits sent by his then special assistant, Amit Patel, to
Epstein, five minutes after receiving them.
Buckingham
Palace may have said in October, when Charles stripped his brother of all
vestiges of royalty, and booted him and his ex-wife out of his 30-room Windsor
residence, Royal Lodge, that such “censures are deemed necessary,
notwithstanding the fact that he continues to deny the allegations against
him”.
As the
drip-drip of disclosures continues, Buckingham Palace has stressed this week
that Charles has “profound concern” at the allegations and is ready to support
any police investigation. Though “specific claims in question are for Mr
Mountbatten-Windsor to address”, it said, “if we are approached by Thames
Valley police we stand ready to support them as you would expect”. The Prince
and Princess of Wales, were also said by their spokesperson to be “deeply
concerned” by the continuing revelations.
Will that
palace support translate into access to any royal email addresses
Mountbatten-Windsor used? One Epstein survivor has called on Buckingham Palace
to proactively search files and emails relating to the then Prince Andrew.
Juliette Bryant, who told the BBC at her Cape Town home she had never met
Andrew and has made no allegations against him, said of the Palace: “It’s great
that they’ve made a statement, finally. But the thing is, are they going to
actually act on it?” Referring to the palace, as well as the police and other
authorities, she added: “They need to go through all Prince Andrew’s files and
emails.”
It’s
difficult for the family whose dysfunction has been brutally exposed in the
public domain, for politicians who like to praise the royal family and for a
public with a profound respect for this most revered of public institutions,
says Bolsolver MP Natalie Fleet, a survivor of teenage grooming.
Fleet
said: “I definitely have [the royal family] on a pedestal, and I want to keep
them there, they are such an important part of our country and I think most
people feel like that.”
“But that
is why there’s even more need for them to be seen to be doing the right thing
at times like this. Women are sick of hearing the right thing. We’re always
grateful for it, but it has to be followed up by action, deeds, not words.”
Mountbatten-Windsor
has been approached for comment.
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