Prince Andrew's trade envoy role in doubt over friendship with sex offender billionaire

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12 April 2012

Prince Andrew was today under pressure to cut links with a convicted sex offender friend.

Questions were also being asked about the prince's role as a UK business envoy as his judgment was again under scrutiny because of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein, 58, a New York billionaire, was jailed for 18 months for soliciting underage prostitutes after the mother of a 14-year-old girl came forward in 2005 and accused him of sexually assaulting her daughter in Palm Beach.

Forty other teenage girls have come forward with similar stories, saying they were ordered to carry out massages, during which some claimed to be sexually molested.

Now Prince Andrew's links with Epstein have been exposed in reports revealing invitations to Windsor Castle and Sandringham, which were reciprocated most recently with a five-day visit to Epstein's Manhattan home.

One woman, Virginia Roberts, who was 15 when she started working for Epstein, said she met Prince Andrew three times, twice when she was 17 and once when she was 18. She described Epstein as a "monster". There is no suggestion there was any sexual contact between her and the prince.

The prince, 51, ended up in hot water recently after it was disclosed that he had spoken "cockily" at a business brunch in Kyrgyzstan and criticised anti-fraud investigators for attempting to probe a UK arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

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