The lawyer for Prince Andrew, Duke of York, has asked a British court to keep a payment from convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who is now working as a defense consultant for the U.S. government in regard to its ongoing case against Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, from becoming public.
The revelation that Prince Andrew was the Prince on the list of payments from Epstein to Giuffre emerged in court filings made public Wednesday, a day after the prince filed a claim alleging that the British press had disclosed sensitive information from his early 1990s rape trial. Giuffre was convicted in 2003 for sex crimes involving girls as young as 12 and living on Epstein’s private Caribbean island, which he bought with some of his profits from investments in online dating services.
Her case was the subject of a BBC documentary that aired in 2015.
Attorney Alan Dershowitz, who is representing Prince Andrew, first asked a British court on Dec. 4 to keep the payment to Giuffre, dated Sept. 14, 2007, from becoming public.
The payment had to be kept confidential because the committee investigating Epstein for a U.S. Department of Justice anti-racketeering law for his crimes had not yet approved the amount of payment at the time of the payment, Dershowitz claimed.
However, Giuffre, who pleaded guilty, and required to register as a sex offender in the United States, filed a challenge to the payment in August, arguing that it violated British law.
James Spencer, a spokesman for the lawyer for Giuffre, said that Giuffre “believes the original conditions of the settlement were breached, and that her child support obligations under the settlement are not being met.” He added that Giuffre is suing to enforce the original conditions of the agreement.
Though the court has not made its ruling yet, Giuffre’s lawyers said that if the payments were kept confidential, Giuffre’s future safety would be “severely compromised,” The Guardian reported.
The court declined to stay the case until a decision is made. The trial of Giuffre’s legal challenge is set to begin on Monday. The payment from Epstein is estimated to be as much as $1.5 million.
Prince Andrew, also known as Earl of Wessex, has vigorously denied accusations made by a former flight attendant, Anna Fazackerley, that he was one of the alleged participants in a sex ring at Epstein’s estate in Florida. In 2017, Andrew did participate in an undercover BBC investigation into the underage sex claims made by Fazackerley, when he met with James Stunt, Epstein’s multimillionaire socialite son.
