Prince Andrew ‘stayed in contact with Epstein five years later than claimed,’ bombshell emails suggest
Prince Andrew remained in contact with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein up to five years later than he admitted, newly released emails suggest.
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In 2019, the Duke of York told Emily Maitlis that he cut ties with Epstein in December 2010 after the latter’s child prostitution prosecution and prison sentence.
But emails published by the Sunday Times reportedly show Epstein telling former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2015 that he had spoken with Andrew recently.
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While discussing a business opportunity with Mr Barak, Epstein told the politician that Andrew had provided information about a business opportunity in China.
“Weathy (sic) Chines (sic) looking for to start personel (sic) protection co in Beijing,” Epstein allegedly told his business partner Mr Barak.
When Mr Barak asked the paedophile where he obtained the information, Epstein replied: “Andrew”.
For clarification, the former PM asked: “The Prince”.
Epstein then confirmed, saying simply: “Yes”.
Mr Barak is reported to have visited Epstein around 30 times between 2013 and 2017.
He previously told The Wall Street Journal that the financier was “a terrible version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” but denied seeing “inappropriate behaviour".
The publication of the emails appears to contradict Andrew’s account of his relationship with Epstein during his infamous 2019 interview with Emily Maitlis.
During the Newsnight programme, Maitlis asked the Prince: “Was that visit, December of 2010 the only time you saw him after he was convicted?”
Andrew responded: “Yes, yeah”.
When pressed on whether he had “seen or spoke to [Epstein] again” after that meeting, Andrew said: “No”.
The Sunday Times said they had found the files posted online by Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS), a Wikileaks-style site.
DDoS reportedly acquired the files from Handala, a pro-Palestinian hacking collective with links to Iran.
The newspaper acknowledged that they could not “definitively [rule] out” tampering of the documents but said they had independently verified the contents of the files using cross-checking of email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses and a handwriting match.