00:00It's shot to the top of the bestseller list in the UK on day one.
00:04Virginia Giuffre's memoir, Nobody's Girl, exposes the rich and powerful men surrounding disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein
00:11and the abuse she endured as a 17-year-old, including from Prince Andrew, who last week relinquished his royal duties ahead of publication.
00:20Giuffre, who committed suicide back in April. More from Eliza Herbert.
00:24Prince Andrew long sought to distance himself from sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
00:30But the stories stacked up and one proved fatal to his royal title of Duke of York.
00:37In a posthumous memoir by Virginia Giuffre, she wrote that Andrew believed having sex with her was his birthright
00:43and alleged she was forced to have sex with him on three occasions, even when she was 17.
00:48On Sunday, Andrew released a statement vigorously denying accusations against him,
00:55but concluded following a discussion with the King that they were distracting from the work of His Majesty and royal family,
01:02and thus he renounced his titles.
01:05Experts say the move is unlikely to stop the public scrutiny.
01:08And we have to remember at the heart of all this is not really the royal family at all.
01:14It is the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, and Virginia Giuffre being one of them.
01:19We're going to hear very, very harrowing details of her life and the sex trafficking she was subjected to,
01:26and that is going to spawn more headlines.
01:29Prince Andrew stepped back from public life in 2006.
01:32Years later, in a well-publicised interview on Newsnight, he said he had cut ties with Epstein in 2010.
01:40However, an email emerged recently in UK media, in which Andrew wrote to the disgraced financier in 2011,
01:48to say,
01:49We are in this together.
01:51He also agreed to pay a £12 million settlement to Giuffre in 2022.
01:57Andrew will remain a prince as he is the second son of the late Queen Elizabeth II.
02:02His former wife, Sarah Ferguson, will no longer use the title of Duchess of York.
02:09For more, let's cross to historian Andrew Lowney.
02:12He's the author of Entitled, The Rise and Fall of the House of York.
02:17Thank you so much for speaking with us here on France 24.
02:21Pleasure.
02:22First off, when did you first have an inkling that Prince Andrew, something was amiss when it came to Geoffrey Epstein?
02:34Well, I mean, clearly there's been a lot of coverage of his relationship with Epstein going back to, I suppose, 2011.
02:39I started researching this book about five years ago, and it was very quickly apparent that the relationship with Epstein, both of Sarah Ferguson and Andrew, was much closer, began much earlier and ended much later than they claimed publicly.
02:54Indeed, indeed, I discovered that almost everything that Prince Andrew says has to be double checked for the truth.
03:01But I think, you know, clearly the publication today of Virginia Geoffrey's book really brings home the relationship, the extraordinary, awful way in which she and other victims were treated.
03:16And I think the fact that she's speaking from beyond the grave has a certain poignancy.
03:21Andrew probably thought he was off the hook.
03:24And now I think he's absolutely on the ropes.
03:29Can you explain to us, his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, what is the relationship between Prince Andrew, Sarah Ferguson and Geoffrey Epstein?
03:39Well, both of them, both Sarah Ferguson and Andrew were close friends of Epstein.
03:44Epstein paid many of Sarah Ferguson's debts.
03:48She claims £15,000.
03:50The true figure is nearer probably £2 million.
03:53She herself said that she'd cut off links with Epstein at the beginning of 2011.
03:58A few weeks later, she was writing to him in very effusive terms, and she continued to stay at his properties until at least 2014, which rather puts a lie to her public denouncement of him.
04:10But she was worried, clearly, about her career with charities dealing with children.
04:16But I think what Epstein got from them was some sort of kudos status.
04:21He was able to go to what he called the hat trick of Balmoral's, Sandringham and Windsor Castle.
04:27And they got, of course, money, which is what they needed.
04:30And Andrew, of course, got as a sideline, a ready supply of young women.
04:35You heard in that report there one expert saying this won't taint the royal household.
04:42This is all just about Andrew.
04:44Do you agree?
04:44No, I don't.
04:46I think they've had years to deal with this problem.
04:49They knew about it.
04:50They covered it up.
04:52Geoffrey herself speaks in her book, and I also talk about it, about the way they tried to, well, they did successfully shut down the ABC TV investigation into Andrew by threatening to remove any access to the royals.
05:04Time and time again, things were taken to the Queen, complaints about his behaviour, and nothing was done.
05:10The Queen, in fact, used to give him honours just after some sort of scandal.
05:14So they're deeply implicated in all this.
05:18They've tried to put pressure on writers.
05:19The Foreign Office, for example, were told not to speak.
05:22Ambassadors were told not to speak to me.
05:24And I think that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark, that there needs to now be a full investigation into Andrew's activities and, indeed, into wider questions of royal accountability and transparency.
05:37Is there more transparency?
05:38I think they've protected him for far too long.
05:39Is there more transparency now that it's Charles that's the king?
05:44No, I'm afraid there isn't.
05:46I mean, the royal wills are still unsealed.
05:48There's no royal register.
05:49Royals are still part of the Freedom of Information Act and, therefore, are exempt.
05:54We have a situation where, for example, all the files on Andrew's time as a trade envoy, taxpayer-funded position, are still closed.
06:03And we have no parliamentary scrutiny of the royals.
06:07And these things, I think, need to change for their own sake, because they depend on the trust of the people.
06:12And at the moment, trust in the institution is rock bottom.
06:17In your book, Andrew Lowney, you write that Prince Andrew was, quote, easy prey for a rattlesnake like Epstein.
06:24Can you explain?
06:25Well, Epstein was a very sophisticated operator, and Andrew, I'm afraid, is not.
06:33And he was low-hanging fruit.
06:35Epstein described him and Bill Clinton as his Super Bowl trophies.
06:40These were his two star characters that he could exploit and play with and take advantage of.
06:46And certainly, Andrew has been caught in what we call kompromat, probably in honey traps.
06:51So there's a lot of material around in which people could put pressure on Andrew.
06:56We know that Epstein traded in information with other countries and other intelligence services.
07:01So there are wider questions of national security.
07:04And, indeed, I think one of the things that's made the King act on Friday were complaints from the government
07:10about Andrew's associations with alleged Chinese spies.
07:16Alleged Chinese spies, does it go beyond China?
07:18You use the word kompromat.
07:19That's a Russian word.
07:21Yes.
07:22I mean, I certainly quote a Russian spy in my book.
07:25I quote someone called Tim Riley, who is an ex-Cambridge academic and a member who worked for Kroll,
07:33talking about Russian kompromat.
07:35We know that he was compromised in Kazakhstan, very close relations with Russia,
07:41but was also Libya, Middle East, and China.
07:43They all understand to have kompromat on Andrew.
07:46So this is a wider question.
07:48It goes beyond his own financial corruption to actually how the institution itself connived in supporting and protecting him
07:56and knowing exactly what he was up to and into wider national intelligence issues.
08:01So it's really quite a serious matter.
08:03I think the most serious crisis for the monarchy since the abdication crisis of 1936.
08:09Bigger than the death of Princess Diana.
08:13Yes, because here we're talking about financial corruption within the royal family.
08:18That was just really the death of the ex-wife of the future king.
08:23I mean, this goes to the heart of the institution itself and wider questions of why they protected him.
08:31And I would argue that I've only got the tip of the iceberg and some of the things have been going on.
08:36So there needs to be much, much wider accountability.
08:39I would like a parliamentary investigation, for example, into his time as a trade envoy with ambassadors who know exactly what he was up to.
08:47He was shoehorning in business for his mates, having to testify on oath to exactly what has happened.
08:54At the outset of this conversation, Andrew Lowney, you mentioned that with the publication of Virginia Giuffre's book,
08:59it's also about these young women, girls sometimes, who were preyed upon.
09:07And the title of your book is Entitled.
09:10And there is, because beyond just the royals, this sense of entitlement, does that still exist today as it did back then?
09:20Absolutely.
09:21I think, you know, it's, you're actually right, it's part of a much wider network of elites who believe that they can operate exactly as they want
09:28and take advantage of the vulnerable.
09:31I mean, many of these young girls that were trafficked to Andrew and others were,
09:35and they ordered them from sort of books and photographs, were, you know, young, early teenagers, couldn't speak English,
09:40many of them aspiring models brought through the model agencies of people like Jean-Luc Brunel.
09:46So, yes, it is a wider question about rich and powerful people abusing their power and trying to control the narrative.
09:56I think the exciting thing is the media have now woken up to the scandal and are actually investigating it.
10:02And this is why, you know, these scandals are emerging day by day.
10:05I envisage a number of people perhaps being investigated and I hope having to stand trial.
10:11Many powerful people in both countries, certainly in Britain and America.
10:15Yeah.
10:16One final question for you, Angelotti.
10:17What do you make of, you just issued your call for an investigation into how the royals behaved in Britain.
10:25What do you make of the reaction in the UK versus the reaction in the United States?
10:32Well, I think, you know, with the two, they're quite similar in some ways.
10:37I mean, we've had, you know, concerns in America about what, you know, the swamp and Trump offering to open files of things that people thought have been, you know, controversies that have been covered up.
10:50And I think we're getting exactly the same thing here.
10:53I mean, I think the sad thing is that Trump clearly is not going to perhaps fully open the Epstein files because he's fearful of what it might actually reveal.
11:02But we certainly have got to a tipping point in this country.
11:05And I think it's happened literally over the last weekend.
11:07I go around talking at literary festivals to the sort of people in Middle England who traditionally support us, the monarchy, as I am,
11:15who are appalled by Andrew's behaviour and the way it's been covered up by the institutions that they believe should be protecting and representing us.
11:24Andrew Lowney, the author of Entitled, The Rise and Fall of the House of York.
11:27So many thanks for speaking with us here on France 24.
11:31Not at all.
11:33Stay with us.
11:33There's much more to come.
11:35More news, plus today's business and sports.
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