Friends of Prince Andrew say he is “relieved” by the end of the FBI’s investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, which means the prince can now turn his full attention to business.
They said that while the prince has been quietly helping facilitate deals over the past three years between his billionaire contacts, which include sheiks, businessmen, and potentates in the Gulf states and Asia, the end of the FBI’s Epstein probe means he can now also visit the U.S. if he needs to.
The historian Andrew Lownie, who next month will publish Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, a meticulously researched biography of the prince and his family, told the Daily Beast: “Andrew wants money. He wants to enjoy a certain lifestyle, and he can do that with the contacts he has made over the years.
“Epstein has always been a side show; the real story is financial corruption by a senior member of the royal family. I think there are grounds for Andrew to be investigated by the [U.K.] National Crime Agency.”
Lownie told The Royalist of Andrew’s typical modus operandi: “The way it works is that he lends his name, opens his contact book, brings people together, and takes a percentage.”
Andrew is widely reported to have sought a 1 percent fee for putting together contacts in a deal for water services in Kazakhstan, although Buckingham Palace denied it and the deal subsequently fell apart.
Andrew was also reported to have sought a 2 percent cut of investment deals that start-ups made as a result of being part of the Chinese edition of his Pitch@Palace incubator, which the prince set up in 2014 to link start-up with investors. He stepped down from running it when he relinquished his royal duties in 2019 over the Epstein scandal.
“For people in China, the Gulf, and the Asian republics, it is prestigious to have him involved,” Lownie said.
Andrew also has people he can rely on in these jurisdictions: His former aide Dominic Hampshire, for example, works for a Bahrain-based investment fund. Another key former aide, Amanda Thirsk, now works for JD.com, one of China’s largest e-commerce groups.
Thirsk also served as director at two Chinese firms alongside the Chinese businessman and alleged spy Yang Tengbo, who befriended Andrew and was a founder of Pitch@Palace China.
Yang’s connections to Andrew emerged when he was denied entry to the U.K. in 2023, with the government saying he was considered to have engaged in “covert and deceptive activity” on behalf of the United Front Work Department, which is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party state apparatus.
Nonetheless, Andrew has emerged from the Epstein scandal in a position that few could have imagined when he resigned from the royal family in disgrace after his disastrous November 2019 BBC interview, when he talked about his relationship with Epstein and denied having sex with Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
Things looked bleak for Andrew after he was obliged to give up his HRH, lost his royal positions, his Buckingham Palace office, and his annual allowance in its wake. He paid off his Giuffre in 2022. Giuffre died by suicide earlier this year.
Andrew has made a few public appearances since the interview, including after the queen’s death in 2022, but has largely stayed out of view. Some reports said he watched huge stacks of DVDs and had installed a device in his house which projected a global flight tracking app on one of the walls.
This may be true, but while the portrayal of Andrew as a lonely recluse suited media stereotypes, it is far from accurate.
As the Daily Beast has frequently reported, he has continued to enjoy a busy social life, largely anchored around shooting. He continues to be a prized guest at many pheasant, partridge, and grouse shoots up and down the land. As one shooting source told the Daily Beast, there are many who are happy to “bathe in his title.”
His shooting social life has carried on despite his media mauling, not least because his brother the king has allowed him to continue to host a so-called family day at the Windsor shoot to which he invites over a dozen friends.
In posh British shooting culture, it is considered bad form to accept shooting hospitality without being able to return it, so being allowed to host a day effectively guarantees Andrew’s continued participation in that elite social circuit.
One shooting acquaintance told the Daily Beast: “The British upper classes are inherently sympathetic to the royal family, and Andrew has always maintained he was the victim of a stitch up and that he was railroaded into making the deal with Giuffre. He insists he has no recollection of ever meeting her let alone having sex with her. Many of the royal family’s friends believe him, and many who don’t believe he was entirely blameless do however believe that you are innocent until proven guilty.”
Andrew also won a very important battle against his brother, who went to great lengths to try and eject him from his palatial home, Royal Lodge, which he shares with his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson (they live in separate wings). Andrew occupies the property on the basis of a long lease, and simply sat tight and relied on this document when his brother’s aides made him an offer he could refuse, to move into Frogmore Cottage, the luxurious former home of Meghan and Harry which is, disgracefully, still sitting vacant. Charles emerged from the debacle—a fight he had picked despite being compromised by his cancer diagnosis—weakened and humiliated.
A friend of the prince said: “It’s no secret that it has been a rough couple of years for Andrew but he is a hard working guy and he has been working away on deals in the gulf quietly in the background. Now, he can put all his focus into business matters. Of course, he is relieved the FBI have now closed the Epstein files as it means he can travel to America if he wants or needs to. It’s over.”
Another friend said: “The whole thing has been incredibly unfair. He has never been found guilty of anything and has been traduced in the media. He just wants to get on with his life and his business ventures.”
The post Prince Andrew Just Wants to Get Back to Making Money After Epstein FBI Probe Ends appeared first on The Daily Beast.
