A few days before Christmas 2010 an email popped into Jeffrey Epstein’s inbox. It was from Prince Andrew, now Mountbatten-Windsor, wishing the financier a “spectacular” New Year.
Mountbatten-Windsor had visited Epstein in New York two weeks before, when a dinner had been arranged on his behalf with guests including Woody Allen and his wife Soon-Yi. He had claimed the purpose of the trip was to end his friendship with the registered sex offender, but the festive greeting tells another story.
“Wishing you a wonderful Christmas and spectacular entry into 2011,” he wrote. “It was great to spend time with my US family. Looking forward to joining you all again soon.”
Epstein, Maxwell and Harvey Weinstein at Princess Beatrice’s 18th birthday party.
Two days later, on Christmas Eve, Mountbatten-Windsor sent another email to Epstein, attaching what he described as a “confidential brief” on business opportunities in Afghanistan, likely to have been given to him in his work as a government trade envoy.
In his Newsnight interview in November 2019, Mountbatten-Windsor claimed he had severed links with Epstein on the trip to New York in early December 2010 and never had “any contact with him from that day forward”. These latest emails released by the US Department of Justice appear to demolish this claim.
It also raises questions for Mountbatten-Windsor – and the royal family – about the information passed to Epstein during his work as trade envoy and the repeated hospitality offered at various royal residences to a convicted paedophile. The Observer has established Epstein was even invited to dinner and drinks at St James’s Palace in London in 2010 while under house arrest in the United States for procuring sex from a minor.
Mountbatten-Windsor has previously told how he met Epstein in 1999 through the financier’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell. A picture taken that year shows Epstein and Maxwell relaxing at a log cabin at Balmoral, the Scottish home of the royal family.
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In June 2000 Epstein and Maxwell attended a Windsor Castle “Dance of the Decades” event to mark four royal birthdays, including Mountbatten-Windsor’s 40th. Six months later they were invited by Mountbatten-Windsor to a shooting weekend at Sandringham, the royal estate in Norfolk. In August 2001 an email sent by someone who described himself as “The Invisible Man”, believed to be Mountbatten-Windsor, to Ghislaine Maxwell stated: “I am up here at Balmoral Summer Camp for the Royal Family … Have you found me some inappropriate friends?”
Mountbatten-Windsor has described a friendship with Epstein which involved meeting him two or three times a year, sometimes staying at the financier’s homes in New York and Florida. Juan Alessi, a former Epstein employee who managed the Palm Beach mansion, has claimed Mountbatten-Windsor spent weeks in a guest residence at the property and had daily massages. Mountbatten-Windsor has denied any wrongdoing.
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By early 2005 Epstein was under investigation for sexual abuse of children. Palm Beach police investigation files detailed how Epstein preyed on and abused girls as young as 14 at his property. Witnesses told how “girls from a local high school” would be paid for massages and sexually assaulted by the financier.
In June 2008, Epstein was convicted for procuring sex from a minor and sentenced to 18 months in jail. He was registered as a sex offender. The financier avoided a trial with a plea deal, despite several victims testifying of trafficking and sexual abuse. The case generated headlines around the world.
While the police investigation was ongoing, Epstein continued to enjoy the social cachet of royal invitations. In the summer of 2006 he attended a masked ball at Windsor Castle along with Ghislaine Maxwell and Harvey Weinstein to celebrate Princess Beatrice’s 18th birthday.
Sarah Ferguson and an unknown woman in a redacted photo from the Epstein files.
Even after his conviction, the royal invitations kept on coming. He had by this time also forged a close relationship with Sarah Ferguson, who he helped over her mounting debts. In an email sent by Epstein in July 2009 when he was in custody to the hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, Epstein wrote: “Fergie said she could organize tea in the Buckingham Palace apts. or Windsor Castle.”
Five days after he was released from custody, the documents suggest Ferguson visited Epstein with her two daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. She wrote after their lunch meeting: “Thank you Jeffrey for being the brother I have always wished for.”
Ferguson invited Epstein to St James’s Palace in February 2010 to celebrate Mountbatten-Windsor’s 50th birthday. Ferguson wrote: “It will be suits and cocktail dresses, and you know me, mysterious mischief.”
In the event, Epstein was unable to attend the celebration at St James’s Palace because he was still under house arrest. He had been released from jail in July 2009, but had to serve a one-year term of “community control”. By this time, his victims were also filing civil claims against him.
Photograph courtesy of US Department of Justice
‘An exercise in futility’: US’s repeated requests to get Andrew to testify
US officials described efforts to persuade Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to reveal what he knew about the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein as an “exercise in futility”.
The US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York wrote to Mountbatten-Windsor’s legal team on at least eight occasions in January and February 2020 to request he provide evidence as a witness in the investigation into Epstein. Officials later concluded the prospects of a voluntary interview were “effectively nil”, reveal emails released by the US Department of Justice.
The correspondence reveals how Mountbatten-Windsor resisted efforts to be interviewed as a witness in the Epstein case after the financier took his own life in his jail cell in August 2019.
During the negotiations, Mountbatten-Windsor’s legal team insisted on various restrictions if any information were provided, including a bar on sharing information with “complainants”, which would include Epstein’s victims. The legal firm acting on Mountbatten-Windsor’s behalf, Blackfords, eventually refused an in-person interview.
On 4 January 2020 the US attorney’s office wrote to a lawyer at Blackfords, asking for an interview covering “his relationship and communications with Jeffrey Epstein and his associates”.
In late January, the then US attorney for the southern district of New York, Geoffrey Berman, said at a news conference in front of Epstein’s New York mansion that Mountbatten-Windsor had provided “zero cooperation”.
In April 2020 the US attorney and the FBI turned to the UK authorities for help in securing an interview. The six-page mutual legal assistance (MLA) request sent to the Home Office stated: “In the event that the witness declines to participate in a voluntary interview, US authorities request that UK authorities conduct a compelled interview of the witness under oath.”
Blackfords later said claims of a lack of co-operation were inaccurate and Mountbatten-Windsor had offered his assistance on “three occasions”. There were, however, strict conditions on an interview, and by September 2020 Blackfords said Mountbatten-Windsor would only provide a written statement and written questions to any answers.
Mountbatten-Windsor and Blackfords have been contacted for comment. Berman declined to comment.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “It is wholly inaccurate to suggest we do not comply with our legal obligations. We are committed to providing mutual legal assistance objectively and impartially across the world.”