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While Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest by British police on Thursday came after years of uproar over his association with Jeffrey Epstein, documents show he had been on the radar of US law enforcement for nearly 15 years.
Mountbatten-Windsor’s name came up during a 2011 FBI inquiry into Epstein, investigative documents recently disclosed by the justice department reveal. Mountbatten-Windsor has denied all allegations of misconduct related to Epstein.
In March of that year, agents traveled to Australia after an Epstein victim contacted federal prosecutors in south Florida, saying she had “information pertinent” to the late financier and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
The victim’s name is redacted from several documents chronicling the interview, but details closely track the public and legal claims made by Virginia Giuffre, a well-known Epstein accuser who died by suicide last year.
Giuffre said Epstein abused her and that he and Maxwell trafficked her to other men, including Mountbatten-Windsor.
During the FBI interview, the woman said that she was a locker-room attendant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach. Maxwell saw her reading a book on massage or anatomy and said she was seeking a traveling masseuse, the woman told investigators.
She told FBI agents she traveled with Maxwell and Epstein to London and that they went to a nightclub with Mountbatten-Windsor and alleged that she and the then-royal engaged in sexual activity at Maxwell’s home. She also alleged that there was sexual activity at Epstein’s Manhattan home, according to the FBI document.
Andrew has repeatedly denied engaging in sexual activity with Giuffre. During his Newsnight interview in November 2019, Andrew insisted he had been elsewhere during this alleged incident, saying: “I was with the children, and I’d taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking for a party at, I suppose, four or five in the afternoon. And then because the duchess [Sarah Ferguson] was away, we have a simple rule in the family that when one is away the other is there.”
The document does not appear to be online any longer, at least as initially indexed, but the Guardian downloaded the file and its URL is in the Internet Archive. Another document that appears near-verbatim to this one, but with accused men’s names redacted, appears in public records request filings that remain online.
Following Epstein’s arrest, Mountbatten-Windsor appeared to feature more prominently in law enforcement’s inquiries into Epstein, both in private Department of Justice communication and public statements.
An internal DoJ memo dated 19 December 2019 revealed prosecutors were interested in speaking to him. “We are in the process of obtaining the name of a lawyer who represents Prince Andrew. Once we have this contact information, we plan to request an interview,” a footnote in the memo states.
Epstein died in jail several months earlier, while awaiting his Manhattan federal sex-trafficking trial. Maxwell was found guilty in 2021 of sex trafficking for her involvement in Epstein’s abuse of teenage girls.
Geoffrey Berman, who was the Manhattan US attorney overseeing Epstein’s prosecution, repeatedly criticized Mountbatten-Windsor for alleged unwillingness to help their investigation. Berman said on 27 January 2020 Mountbatten-Windsor had provided “zero” cooperation in their Epstein investigation despite his promises to help.
“Contrary to Prince Andrew’s very public offer to cooperate with our investigation into Epstein’s co-conspirators, an offer that was conveyed via press release, Prince Andrew has now completely shut the door on voluntary cooperation and our office is considering its options,” Berman similarly said on 9 March 2020.
“Today, Prince Andrew yet again sought to falsely portray himself to the public as eager and willing to cooperate with an ongoing federal criminal investigation into sex trafficking and related offenses committed by Jeffrey Epstein and his associates, even though the Prince has not given an interview to federal authorities, has repeatedly declined our request to schedule such an interview, and nearly four months ago informed us unequivocally – through the very same counsel who issued today’s release – that he would not come in for such an interview,” Berman said in a statement.
“If Prince Andrew is, in fact, serious about cooperating with the ongoing federal investigation, our doors remain open, and we await word of when we should expect him.”
Contact information for Mountbatten-Windsor’s press representative was not immediately available.
