Jeffrey Epstein and the monarchy's 'Andrew problem'

• The former Prince Andrew was arrested on February 19 on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
• King Charles III issued a statement saying, "The law must take its course."
• Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his titles in 2022 and 2025

This story originally ran in Die Welt and appears on Business Insider through the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network.

Prince Andrew's 66th birthday began in a somber atmosphere — with the arrival of six unmarked police vehicles and eight plainclothes officers who searched his home, Wood Farm, on the royal Sandringham estate in Norfolk, and with news that a warrant had been issued for the king's younger brother on suspicion of serious abuse of office.

The British public is still adjusting to calling him simply Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after King Charles III stripped him of the rest of his titles and honors. For the royal "Firm," seeking to redefine itself after the long reign of Elizabeth II, he has become a liability.

Andrew, once said to have been Queen Elizabeth's favorite child, has spent years fending off questions about his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and whether he was involved in Epstein's trafficking of underage girls and women. Epstein's associate, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell — herself a close confidant of Andrew — was convicted of sex trafficking after his 2019 death in jail.

The latest release of the Epstein files has opened a Pandora's box and dramatically intensified what the palace long referred to as "the Andrew problem." The allegations of abuse of office likely relate to correspondence indicating that Andrew divulged confidential information obtained during overseas trade missions.

Documents released by the US Department of Justice last month also show that in 2010, the prince's liaison shared with Epstein details about restructuring plans at the Royal Bank of Scotland — which had been bailed out with taxpayer funds after the financial crisis — and internal management issues at luxury carmaker Aston Martin.

In a life that, after his early years in the Royal Navy, appeared to lack a clearly defined purpose, Andrew's most significant official role was that of Britain's trade and investment envoy. He was tasked with promoting British economic interests in the Middle East and Asia — a kind of royal "shop window" for a country reliant on foreign investment and willing to dispatch a spare prince around the globe to attract it.

The boundary between that role and Andrew's party-filled lifestyle was often blurred; his reputation as a flamboyant bon vivant ("Randy Andy") followed him persistently.

Epstein, who wanted access to influential figures in London, offered Andrew female companionship. In one 2013 email in the files, Epstein wrote: "I have a very pretty friend coming to London on Tuesday. Andrew might like to take her to dinner." Photographs from the Epstein files show Andrew bent over a young woman on a carpet.

The difficulties facing Mountbatten-Windsor and the royal family now extend beyond such unsavory dealings to concrete criminal allegations. On Thursday, the king issued a statement emphasizing that the days of quiet fraternal backing were over. He welcomed a "full, fair and proper process" with the palace's "unrestricted support and cooperation."

One fact is already beyond dispute: For someone raised within the royal family to value discretion above all else, Andrew's apparent recklessness is striking. The emails show he forwarded government travel reports from visits to Vietnam, Singapore, and China to Epstein.

Most serious of all remains the accusation by Virginia Giuffre, one of the women who says she was recruited and sexually exploited by Epstein and Maxwell and who took her own life last April after years of psychological distress. She alleged that Andrew had sex with her in London in 2001 when she was 17 — around the same time the now widely circulated photograph was taken, showing Andrew with his arm around her in Maxwell's apartment.

Andrew has repeatedly denied having sexual contact with Giuffre; he reached an out-of-court settlement with her in a civil case, reportedly involving a multimillion-pound payment. Andrew admitted no liability and has argued that Queen Elizabeth and her closest advisors pressed for the settlement in order to resolve the matter during the final years of the queen's life.

The settlement money — described in UK press reports as a "loan" from the royal household to Andrew — in retrospect appears to have been paid in the hope that a sensitive matter would thereby be put to rest.

This raises uncomfortable questions for today's monarchy, which now issues statements and expresses sympathy for Epstein's victims. The so-called "Fab Four," representing the monarchy in a time of national and international upheaval — King Charles and Queen Camilla, along with the Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Catherine — are said to agree on maintaining clear professional and personal distance from Andrew.

Particular irritation has reportedly been caused by indications in the files that visits by Epstein and by women he intended to introduce to Andrew "privately" were planned at royal residences without security vetting.

The removal of all Andrew's royal titles and patronages after lengthy negotiations with Charles — and his relocation to a more modest residence on the Sandringham estate — was a clear signal that the days when he could count on his brother's support were over.

Yet questions remain as to how the drama was allowed to spiral so far out of control — and why decisive action was so long delayed, even as Andrew became increasingly uncooperative over the years.

One possible answer is that the monarchy is a strategically minded institution. As a centuries-old system, it has survived upheavals ranging from the abdication crisis of the 1930s to the estrangement and death of Princess Diana.

Within palace circles, there appears to be a belief that a largely monarchist British public will accept that the royal family, too, is a complex entity, with problematic members navigating the tension between personal loyalty and public expectation.

Yet this affair and its emerging legal consequences illustrate how difficult it is for a system built on lineage and rigid hierarchy to find a meaningful role for spare heirs.

Formally, Andrew remains eighth in line to the throne — birth dates cannot be altered, nor the succession changed without an act of Parliament — but in practice, he is an outcast. The Andrew problem, however, no longer concerns him alone. His arrest may well mark only the beginning of a deeper and more painful reckoning.

Anne McElvoy is a member of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network and executive editor at Politico UK.