The unanswered questions looming over the Andrew scandal

By Lauren Said-Moorhouse, CNN

Britain's royal family has stripped Prince Andrew of his royal titles and ordered him out of his 30-room residence in the grounds of Windsor Castle, bowing to intensifying pressure over his association with disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

There has been an avalanche of headlines coinciding with the publication of a posthumous memoir, Nobody's Girl, by Andrew's accuser Virginia Giuffre. The royal family will have hoped Andrew's decision to give up the use of his royal titles and honours would put an end to the saga. But it was not enough.

Once celebrated as a decorated war hero, Andrew, the brother of King Charles III, has been thrown into the royal wilderness, not even invited to spend Christmas with his family at their Sandringham estate, and now unceremoniously stripped of his titles and booted out of his home.

Andrew insists he never met Giuffre, who accused him of sexually assaulting her while she was a teenager, and has always denied accusations of wrongdoing against him. Critics say the royal family and UK government did not act swiftly enough to hold the disgraced royal to account. Giuffre died by suicide in April at the age of 41.

How close were Andrew and Epstein?

The former prince, now plain Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, was one of the many high-profile individuals to associate with Epstein. Andrew has said the pair were introduced by Epstein's then girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell in 1999. He later said they met "infrequently," adding that their encounters were "probably no more than only once or twice a year."

He also admitted to staying at several properties belonging to the disgraced financier, who was found dead in his New York prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.

Andrew is known to have attended a charity fundraiser at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in 2000, at which Maxwell was also present, according to photographs published in the Palm Beach Post at the time.'

Months later, Epstein and Maxwell mingled with royalty at a Windsor Castle party hosted by Queen Elizabeth II to mark Andrew's 40th birthday, as well as Princess Anne's 50th, the Queen Mother's 100th and Princess Margaret's 70th. Andrew later invited the couple back to Windsor in 2006 for his daughter Princess Beatrice's extravagant 18th birthday ball, according to Britain's The Sun on Sunday newspaper.

In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to two state prostitution charges and registered as a sex offender in a deal that allowed him to avoid federal charges.

When did Andrew cut ties with Epstein?

The long-running friendship has raised persistent questions about Andrew's judgement, given his position at the time as a working royal, a status he gave up in 2019.

In her book, Giuffre details the three occasions she allegedly had sex with the prince - in London, New York and on Epstein's Caribbean island, Little St. James. She claimed that Andrew correctly guessed she was underage in the United States when they were introduced and that Epstein gave her $15,000 (NZ$26,000) "for servicing the man the tabloids called 'Randy Andy.'"

She also repeated a claim from a 2015 sworn declaration that the third encounter was "an orgy" on Epstein's island with the financier and "approximately eight other girls" who "appeared to be under the age of 18 and didn't really speak English."

Andrew reached an out-of-court settlement with Giuffre in 2022 after she filed a civil suit against him in New York. While he didn't admit wrongdoing, Andrew did acknowledge Giuffre's suffering as a victim of sex trafficking.

The royal has always denied all accusations against him and insisted that he never witnessed or suspected any of the behaviour of which Epstein was accused. In a now-infamous BBC interview in 2019, Andrew said that he had severed all ties with Epstein in 2010.

However, a newly reported email from 2011 has called that claim into question. Earlier this month, The Mail on Sunday and The Sun on Sunday newspapers reported that Andrew appeared to reach out to Epstein once more, telling him to "keep in close touch" and that they were "in this together." Andrew has not responded to the reports and CNN has reached out for comment.

Meanwhile, London's Metropolitan Police has said it is "actively looking into" a Mail on Sunday report that Andrew in 2011 asked a police officer assigned to him as a bodyguard to dig up dirt on Giuffre.

What did the royal family know and when?

It remains unclear what the royal family, or other members of the royal household, knew about the extent of Andrew's relationship with Epstein, and when they knew it.

The 2019 BBC interview was filmed at Buckingham Palace, but the depth of the household's knowledge of his friendship with Epstein is uncertain.

Both his staff and his security detail would have been aware of his movements at the time he associated with Epstein. But the royal family has not commented publicly on any of that.

Why was Andrew not stripped of his titles sooner?

Andrew's behaviour put King Charles in a difficult position: effectively banish his brother as a royal outcast or allow the steady drumbeat of negative headlines to risk further reputational damage to the institution.

Andrew had already stepped back from his frontline duties in 2019 and was stripped of his military titles and charity patronages by the late Queen in 2022. But the palace clearly felt something more had to be done to halt the seemingly weekly drip-feed of salacious headlines.

On 17 October, Andrew announced that he would stop using his Duke of York title as well as relinquishing other titles and honours bestowed upon him by the royal family over the years. (He was also known as the Earl of Inverness and Baron Killyleagh, a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order and as a Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.)

Andrew said the decision was made in consultation with King Charles, as well as other members of the family, because the "continued accusations" were distracting from the family's work. "I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first," he added.

And there's the rub - keeping it in the family means he did not give up the titles; he merely gave up use of them, and so technically he still held all of them.

But critics, including Giuffre's brother, said there needed to be greater accountability.

In the end, Charles decided to take the extraordinary step on Thursday of moving to formally take away Andrew's titles and honours.

The monarch is understood to be sending royal warrants to the Lord Chancellor to secure the removal of the Dukedom of York from the Peerage Roll, as well as the title of Prince and Style of "Royal Highness." His other subsidiary titles of Inverness and Killyleagh are similarly affected.

Andrew was made a duke, the highest rank in Britain's system of hereditary peerage, when he married ex-wife Sarah Ferguson in 1986. Removing the title requires an act of Parliament, which would be a protracted process.

While Andrew was known officially as the Duke of York, it's not a title that many outside the UK would be familiar with and ultimately the status of prince is the only one that matters.

Andrew became a prince automatically at birth, as the son of the then reigning monarch, and that status can only be changed if King Charles issues a directive known as a Letters Patent.

Despite Thursday's announcement, Andrew remains eighth in line to the British throne. That status could be removed by legislation, but this would require the consent of Commonwealth nations around the world, which would take time. The last time this protocol was used was when Edward VIII abdicated in 1936.

Why did he continue living on royal property?

Despite the deepening scandal, Andrew continued to live with his ex-wife at Royal Lodge, a 30-room mansion on the Windsor estate, outside London, despite reported attempts by Charles to persuade him to relocate. He secured a 75-year lease on the property in 2003.

Profits from the estate are paid to the British government and further outrage was ignited after it was revealed that the terms of the rental agreement effectively mean Andrew has never paid rent on the accommodation.

The lease required an initial one-off payment of £1 million (NZ$2.29 million). Additionally, he was required to pay a further £7.5 million to cover refurbishments which were completed in 2005, according to a National Audit Office report.

After those upfront costs, the lease states he has since paid an annual rent of "one peppercorn (if demanded)," a copy of the Royal Lodge leasehold agreement showed.

The agreement also includes a clause that the Crown Estate would have to pay Andrew £558,000 if he gave up the property early.

"The National Audit Office reviewed the lease arrangements for Royal Lodge in 2005 and in its report, which was published at that time, concluded that the Crown Estate does not have any special procedures when negotiating agreements with the Royal Family," a Downing Street spokesperson said earlier in October. "An independent evaluation concluded that the transaction with Prince Andrew and Royal Lodge was appropriate."

Regardless, there had been mounting pressure on Andrew to leave the property, which sits in Windsor Great Park close to a chapel used by the royals.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, wrote to the Crown Estate and Treasury to seek further information on Royal Lodge. "This forms part of our long-standing remit, on behalf of Parliament and the British public, to examine the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of public spending, and ensure the taxpayer is receiving best value for money," he said in a statement.

A YouGov poll published in October revealed that four in five Britons would support Andrew being formally stripped of his dukedom.

The Palace may have felt that it had no option but to order Andrew to leave the residence, given the increased scrutiny from lawmakers and the brewing scandal.

Are there other scandals involving Andrew?

Andrew has also faced furious questions over his business deals with China and his contact with an alleged Chinese spy. Court documents revealed the disgraced royal's apparently close relationship with Yang Tengbo.

In a tribunal hearing in December 2024 that upheld an earlier decision to bar Yang from the UK, it was revealed that Yang was authorised to act on Andrew's behalf during business meetings with potential Chinese investors in the UK, and that he was invited to Andrew's 60th birthday party in 2020. Throughout a government investigation into the relationship, Yang has denied any wrongdoing.

Andrew's office said at the time that he ceased his relationship with Yang after receiving government advice.

Meanwhile, fresh documents released this year revealed that Andrew sent birthday wishes each year to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. A witness statement from a former aide to the royal revealed that Andrew had a "communication channel" with China through Yang but insisted that there was "nothing to hide."

-CNN