Andrew’s charities back off
Britain's Prince Andrew has faced further disgrace as charitable partners and educational institutions begin to distance themselves from him amid unfavourable fallout from an interview on his friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Like most senior members of the royal family, the Duke of York is patron for charities and other civic endeavours.
But supporters of entities linked to the Prince are now reconsidering that association after his effort to draw a line under the Epstein scandal backfired so disastrously.
Standard Chartered bank, a backer of his flagship entrepreneur project, Pitch@Palace, has decided not to renew its sponsorship for “commercial reasons”. Professional services provider KPMG won't renew its support for the initiative either. Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca says it is reviewing its three-year partnership, which is due to expire at the end of the year.
Andrew is a patron for dozens of organisations, and a few of the more prominent groups have acknowledged they are considering whether they want that to continue.
London Metropolitan University is reviewing Andrew's role as patron, and students at the University of Huddersfield, where Andrew is chancellor, are objecting to being “represented by a man with ties to organised child sexual exploitation and assault”.
Meanwhile, two New York prison guards responsible for monitoring Epstein the night he killed himself have been charged with falsifying prison records to conceal they were sleeping and browsing the internet during the hours they were supposed to be keeping a close watch on prisoners.
Guards Tova Noel and Michael Thomas were accused in a grand jury indictment of neglecting their duties by failing to check on Epstein for nearly eight hours, and of fabricating log entries to show they had been making checks every 30 minutes, as required.
The charges against the officers in connection with the wealthy American financier’s death in August provide a damning glimpse of security lapses inside a high-security unit at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York, where Epstein had been awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.