Andrew now faces having to mount a legal defence in New York. Photo / AP
Andrew now faces having to mount a legal defence in New York. Photo / AP
Opinion
OPINION:
Prince Andrew has the very, very dubious honour of being able to lay claim to a number of royal firsts: the first member of the house of Windsor to invite a Libyan gun smuggler to Buckingham Palace for lunch; the first HRH to have met, on 12 separate occasions, with a dictator (Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan); and the first Prince of the realm to be friends with a convicted sex offender.
This week in a Manhattan federal courtroom, another first got added to that list: first member of the Queen's family to be accused of sexual assault.
On Tuesday this week, Virginia Giuffre (formerly Roberts), one of Jeffrey Epstein's alleged sex trafficking victims, accused the Duke of York of sexually abusing her on three occasions when she was under the age of 18.
Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts at Ghislaine Maxwell's townhouse in London. Photo / File
(One of the alleged assaults took place in London when she was 17. In that jurisdiction, she was considered over the age of consent. The other two alleged attacks happened in New York and the US Virgin Islands where she would have legally been a child.)
Andrew has previously, and strenuously, denied Giuffre's claims.
In a statement, Giuffre said: "I am holding Prince Andrew accountable for what he did to me. The powerful and rich are not exempt from being held responsible for their actions."
The Times reports that a summons has been sent to the Royal Lodge, the vast Windsor home he shares with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, and that he has been "locked in long-distance talks with his lawyers as they draw up their strategy for fighting the suit".
As of the time of writing, the Duke has not publicly responded in any way to the lawsuit and is currently with his mother, the Queen, at her Scottish estate, Balmoral.
However, this lawsuit not only raises the prospect of a legal quagmire for the 61-year-old but the possibility of financial ruin.
Giuffre is seeking both compensatory and punitive damages. Speaking to Britain's The Telegraph, her lawyer David Boies said: "Both categories of damages will be substantial. [A person's declared wealth] does come into consideration with respect to punitive damages."
Melissa Murray, a professor of law at New York University, told the BBC this week that Andrew "could be on the hook for significant money damages".
So, how "on the hook" are we talking about? Short answer: painfully and ruinously "on the hook".
Per the Daily Mail, legal experts have argued that, should Giuffre win in court, the damages bill alone could come to NZ$142 million).
Similarly, Mark Stephens, a London lawyer who has represented sexual harassment victims, has told The Telegraph the jury could award Giuffre anywhere from $28m to $142m too. (Though that could be lowered on appeal.) "In the first instance, it would be a very big number indeed," Stephens has said.
Will the Queen dare to bail out her son if he runs into money issues? Photo / AP
The US courts are also able to, via the British legal system, apply to claim assets in the UK.
While the actual figure that could be associated with Giuffre proving her case is a matter of speculation right now, what seems to be a given here is that Prince Andrew is about to face some seriously hefty legal bills.
In October last year, The Times revealed he had hired a "working group" made up of lawyers from the London firm Blackfords, Clare Montgomery QC and Mark Gallagher, a PR specialist and crisis management expert. This sort of firepower does not come cheap.
Beyond whatever his British legal bills might be, Andrew now faces having to mount a legal defence in New York. (The consensus among experts seems to be that if Andrew ignored Giuffre's lawsuit that would only hugely increase the possibility of the court finding in her favour.)
Again, if the court did find in Giuffre's favour, he would not have to find just the cold hard cash to pay his legal eagles but potentially also for her team from the firm Boies Schiller Flexner plus whatever damages the court might hand down.
The former British Trade Envoy, who stood down from the plum role in 2011 over criticism about his ties to Epstein, is already in a very precarious financial position.
In 2014, Andrew and his ex-wife/roommate purchased a $35.5m property in the exclusive Swiss enclave from French socialite Isabelle de Rouvre. Last year, it was revealed that de Rouvre is suing the former couple for allegedly still owing her for $13m for the property.
The house, which boasts seven bedrooms and an indoor pool, is still on the market for the same price the couple paid for it.
Quite how wealthy or not Andrew may be has long been a subject of intense debate.
"Prince Andrew's finances are shrouded in a pea soup of impenetrability," David McClure, a royal finance expert and author of The Queen's True Worth, has said. "He has an affluent lifestyle, but where does the money come from? He has no discernible income."
Melania Trump, Prince Andrew, Gwendolyn Beck and Jeffrey Epstein at a party at the Mar-a-Lago club. Photo / File
He is thought to receive about $491,000 from the Queen annually for his personal expenses along with around $38,000 from his naval pension. However, those figures do not entirely explain how he could have afforded to buy the chalet in the first place. Nor does it explain how he has come to own, for example, a $295,000 Patek Philippe watch or a shiny new Bentley.
The Daily Mail has previously reported that "the Duke also appears to have managed to help clear his ex-wife's £5m [$9.9m] debts".
Maybe the Bank of Mumsy is more generous than anyone thought or maybe he just keeps finding loose rubies down the back of the sofa at Sandringham and has been quietly pocketing them.
If Giuffre's case is ultimately successful and, as the experts have speculated, she is awarded an eight-figure sum, the very, very thorny question then becomes, who would pay?
The Queen is worth about $718m, according to the 2021 Times annual rich list, meaning she could, in theory, dip into her vast Coutts bank accounts and get her son out of trouble. However, that move would be an unmitigated PR disaster for Her Majesty and would very likely face a swift and vehement backlash from the public.
Virginia Giuffre (formerly Roberts, centre) says she was trafficked by sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Photo / AP
The question here might come down to, is the Queen willing to imperil the Crown to save her son's wrinkly neck? Would she risk antagonising the unwashed masses at a time when support for the monarchy in the younger demographic is slipping precariously?
With the case potentially lasting at least two years, none of this will go away anytime soon for the embattled royal.
Still, there are worse places to be right now than to be trapped in a vast Scottish castle with one's mother and ex-wife. Like the Brooklyn jail cell where Prince Andrew's friend Ghislaine Maxwell has been held for more than a year as she prepared to stand trial for allegedly procuring underage girls for Epstein.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years' experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
