British police said Sunday they were probing claims that Prince Andrew asked an officer to dig up dirt for a smear campaign against his sexual assault accuser Virginia Giuffre.
The development comes after Andrew on Friday renounced his royal title under pressure from King Charles III, following further revelations about his ties to late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
London’s Metropolitan Police force said it was looking into allegations in the Mail on Sunday that Andrew tried to smear Giuffre, who accused the prince of sexually assaulting her when she was 17.
Andrew, 65, has long denied the assault accusations, which have caused considerable embarrassment to the British monarchy and seen the prince virtually banished from royal life in recent years.
The Mail on Sunday reported that Andrew passed on Giuffre’s date of birth and social security number to his state-funded police protection in 2011 and asked him to investigate.
“We are aware of media reporting and are actively looking into the claims made,” a spokesperson for the Met said in a statement emailed to AFP.
Andrew’s request came shortly before the publication of a now-infamous photo taken in London appearing to show the prince with his arm around Giuffre’s waist, the paper said.
Andrew reportedly emailed the late queen Elizabeth II’s then-deputy press secretary and told him of his request to his bodyguard, which the officer is not said to have acted upon.
The newspaper said it obtained the email from documents held by a US congressional committee.
Giuffre, who accused Epstein of using her as a sex slave, says that she had sex with Andrew on three separate occasions, including when she was under 18.
Andrew has repeatedly denied Giuffre’s accusations and avoided a trial in a civil lawsuit by paying a multimillion-dollar settlement.
The allegations have received renewed focus ahead of the publication next week of Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs.
Giuffre, a US and Australian citizen, took her own life in April. Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking underage girls for sex.
Andrew has also given up membership of the prestigious Order of the Garter, the most senior knighthood in the British honours system, which dates to the 1300s.
Giuffre’s brother Sky Roberts has urged Charles to go further and strip Andrew of his right to be a prince.
“I think there’s more that he could do,” Roberts said of the king on ITV News.
pdh/cc
