Refusing to co-operate: Experts say Prince Andrew could be arrested
The Queen and Prince Charles have reportedly held an emergency meeting to discuss a way for Prince Andrew to return to public life. However, the result wasn’t good for the disgraced royal.
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The Queen and Prince Charles have held an emergency meeting to discuss scandal-hit Prince Andrew.
They took time out from royal estate business at Sandringham to chat about “family matters”.
A royal source said: “Both had hoped the Duke of York could perhaps be rehabilitated back into public life in time but that is now looking increasingly unlikely.”
It appears that Prince Andrew may now never return to public life following the fallout over sex abuse allegations, which he denies strongly.
ANDREW COULD BE ARRESTED
Britain’s disgraced Prince Andrew could face being arrested upon returning to the US if he continues to make “zero co-operation” with authorities investigating his ties with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor, told the Sun Onlineif Prince Andrew travelled to the US and was served with a subpoena to testify before a grand jury and failed to do so, he could be arrested.
His warning comes as lawyer Lisa Bloom, who represents five of Epstein’s alleged sexual trafficking victims, said it was time for Andrew “to stop playing games and to come forward to do the right thing and answer questions”.
“He could be arrested if he failed to show up and testify,” Mr Weinstein told the Sun Online.
“Then he would be on contempt and have to answer to a judge who could then decide to put him in jail.
“However, he could also try to quash the subpoena or assert his right not to testify on grounds of self incrimination, if those grounds existed.”
Daniel Sternberg, a barrister specialising in extradition law at Temple Garden Chambers in London, added: “While there is no way to compel Prince Andrew to give evidence in the UK or the US in either the civil or criminal case, his failure to do so does not sit well with his previous public statements that he would help any appropriate law enforcement agency with its inquiries.”
On Wednesday Bloom stated her clients were feeling “outraged and disappointed at Prince Andrew’s behaviour.”
Prince Andrew remained out of the public eye, with Buckingham Palace and his legal team maintaining a “no comment” policy one day after US lawyer Geoffrey Berman said he has provided “zero co-operation” to the FBI and the US prosecutors seeking to speak with him about Epstein.
His billionaire financier friend killed himself in a Manhattan jail in August.
The statement by Berman, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, was the first official confirmation the leading US law enforcement agency had sought – and failed – to obtain evidence from Andrew, the third child of Queen Elizabeth II, despite his pledge in November about co-operating with legitimate law enforcement agencies.
The US decision to make the 59-year-old prince’s silence public may be part of a strategy to increase public calls for him to co-operate.
Prince Andrew is being sought for questioning as a witness who may be able to shed light on the illegal activities of Epstein.
NEW TWIST IN PRINCE ANDREW SAGA
Victims are saying Prince Andrew’s refusal to co-operate was concerning and reminded him no-one was above the law.
The bombshell was another major headache for the Queen, who has supported Prince Andrew and was pictured with him in the aftermath of Harry and Meghan’s decision to quit royal duties.
Mr Berman, who is overseeing the investigation, said: “To date, Prince Andrew has provided zero co-operation.”
Prince Andrew said last year he would help in finding out the truth about Epstein, a convicted paedophile who was facing new charges when he died.
The Duke of York was forced into early retirement last year because of his links to Epstein and claims from Australian based woman Virginia Roberts Giuffre she was forced to have sex with him when she was 17 years old.
The Duke of York has denied the pair having met, saying he was at a Pizza Express in Woking, but witnesses have come forward claiming to have seen them together at Tramp Nightclub in 2001.
Sigrid McCawley, who represents Ms Roberts Giuffre and other Epstein victims, said Prince Andrew’s silence raised questions.
“Prince Andrew’s continued refusal to co-operate with authorities after freely acknowledging that he would be prepared to answer inquiries raises even more questions about the role he played in the international sex trafficking ring Jeffrey Epstein and others operated,” she said in a statement released early on Tuesday Australian time.
“Prince Andrew should take most seriously the deeply held belief in this country that no one is above the law.”
Lisa Bloom, who is representing a witness who claims she saw Prince Andrew with Ms Roberts Giuffre, said she wanted the investigation to continue.
“Glad to read authorities are pursuing this investigation. I spoke to FBI recently about my client who alleges she was a witness to Prince Andrew in the London club with Virginia Roberts in 2001, though he says it didn’t happen. My client very much wants to speak to FBI directly,” she said on Twitter.
‘I AM WILLING TO HELP’
A trainwreck BBC interview last year brought the Prince Andrew scandal to a head last year when he tried in vain to defend himself.
Prince Andrew said when asked last year about being interviewed by police: “I am willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency.”
The Duke of York was also accused of showing no compassion to Epstein’s victims in the BBC interview, which he had reportedly told the Queen went well.
His PR guru Amanda Thirsk quit after the interview but received a significant leaving payment.
Ms Roberts Giuffre, 36, who says Epstein used her as a sex slave, claims he forced her to sleep with Prince Andrew three times.
She was aged 17 when she was photographed with Prince Andrew in London with his arm around her bare midriff in 2001.
Ms Roberts Giuffre revealed she was “horrified and ashamed” after the encounter with Prince Andrew, 59.
However, he denied the claim saying he had been at a pizza restaurant with his daughter on the night Ms Roberts Giuffre said they met at the Tramp nightclub.
He also claimed he did not sweat, although photographs emerged that appeared to contradict his claims.
Ms Giuffre Roberts said during an interview last year: “He knows what happened, I know what happened and there’s only one of us telling the truth.”
Prince Andrew remains part of the fold in the royal family.
He has been referred to as the Queen’s favourite son, but his older brother, Prince Charles, was reportedly behind the decision to force his early retirement.
Prince Andrew was likely to be excluded from official photographs of his daughter Beatrice’s wedding to Italian property developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, 36, later this year.
The wedding will not be shown on television, and her father’s reduced role comes after he did not attend her engagement party at the height of the scandal.
Buckingham Palace is not commenting on the matter.
A source said: “This issue is being dealt with by the Duke of York’s legal team.”
WHERE IS EPSTEIN’S ‘MADAM’?
The latest twist on the Prince Andrew saga came after it was revealed Epstein’s “madam” Ghislaine Maxwell was so close to Prince Andrew she visited him four times in one day at Buckingham Palace, according to a former royal aide.
Ms Maxwell even enjoyed intimate picnics in view of the Queen’s bedroom window, according to Paul Page, a former royal protection officer, The Sun reports.
The Duke of York, has claimed he was “not that close” to Maxwell, who has been missing for more than six months.
But Mr Page – who worked with Prince Andrew between 1998 and 2004 – has hit back at the Duke’s claims, saying Maxwell was a close friend who had regular secretive visits to the palace.
“The first occasion I had cause to meet Ghislaine was when the privy purse phoned down and said, ‘We’ve got a guest coming for Andrew but the name is not to be entered in the book’. That was about 2001,” Mr Page told The Sunday Mirror.
“She turned up in a chauffeur-driven Range Rover and we let her in. Half an hour after that me and my colleague walked through the garden to go back to the police lodge and he was having a picnic with her by the summer house, opposite the Queen’s bedroom window.
“One of my colleagues saw her come in and out the Palace four times in one day.”
The Sun reports Maxwell, a British socialite and the youngest child of publishing tycoon and fraudster Robert Maxwell, has been named by victims of Epstein as his “madam”, who groomed girls for sex with the billionaire and his rich and famous friends.
Alleged Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre said Maxwell forced her to have sex with Prince Andrew on three occasions when she was 17-years-old in 2001.
The Duke of York has denied the claims and in a BBC Newsnight interview last year, saying he and Maxwell were “not that close”.
Leaked emails appeared to show Prince Andrew begging Maxwell to help him just hours after Ms Giuffre named him in US court papers.
A BBC documentary uncovered emails allegedly sent between Prince Andrew and Maxwell in 2015, which he begged her to help him.
They were allegedly send hours after Ms Giuffre lodged court papers in Florida, claiming she had been forced to have sex with him.
She alleges she was later forced to have sex with him on two other occasions, in New York and the US Virgin Islands, when she was aged 17.
Once photographed in the pages of glossy magazines on the social circuits of London and New York, Maxwell has vanished from public life since Epstein’s death and appears to have taken extraordinary lengths to keep her whereabouts a secret.
Her last known public appearance was in June 2019 at a charity supercar rally in Geneva, two weeks after it was announced the investigation into Epstein’s sex crime activities would be reopened.
Maxwell is believed to have met the Duke of York on June 5, the day before the rally, in London.
Speaking in the bombshell BBC interview, Prince Andrew said his last contact with Ms Maxwell was “earlier this year (referring to 2019) funnily enough in the summer, in the spring, summer” but denied discussing Epstein.
Maxwell was raised in Oxfordshire and still has significant ties to the UK.
This report originally appeared in The Sun and has been edited and republished, with permission.
Originally published as Refusing to co-operate: Experts say Prince Andrew could be arrested