Alleged £12k payment for sex with Duke
Virginia Guiffre’s claims over night out at club with the royal come to light in Epstein court papers
VIRGINIA GIUFFRE was paid £12,000 by convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with the Duke of York, she has claimed, in the latest release of documents from a New York court.
Ms Giuffre said that she went with Prince Andrew to the Tramp nightclub in London.
The allegations, released to the public for the first time yesterday, were made in a 2016 deposition given by Ms Giuffre in a lawsuit she brought against Alan Dershowitz, a legal scholar.
In the videotaped interview, Ms Giuffre said Epstein paid her $15,000 for having sex with the prince.
The documents also contain an interview with Epstein who refused to answer questions about whether he had blackmailed the Duke after the alleged sex with Ms Giuffre in 2001.
Ms Giuffre’s lawyer asked Epstein if he had requested that she “give you a full report on the details of what men like Prince Andrew did to her so that you would have blackmail material you could use”.
He was also asked what he knew about the Duke’s “sexual preferences”, and if Ms Giuffre had “recounted specific behaviour that Prince Andrew requested before sexual intercourse”.
Epstein pleaded his Fifth Amendment right not to respond.
In the interview with Ms Giuffre, she was asked whether she was “paid $1015,000 by or on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein for having sex with Prince Andrew”.
She replied: “Yes, I did receive $15,000. I don’t know what equivalent that is to pounds.”
Ms Giuffre has previously claimed she was kept as Epstein’s “sex slave” and that she was forced to have sex with the prince in London in 2001.
The Duke had to step down from the working Royal family after the allegations, which included a photograph of him, Ms Giuffre and Ms Maxwell, and has settled a separate lawsuit with Ms Giuffre for an undisclosed sum.
The deposition also recounted how she and Prince Andrew allegedly attended the members-only Tramp nightclub in Mayfair. She said they stayed at the club “an hour but not two” and that “he ordered the drinks”.
Prince Andrew has denied any wrongdoing.
Epstein’s former lawyer has claimed the Duke would have won the sexual abuse civil case brought by Ms Giuffre at a trial. Mr Dershowitz said the royal had made a “terrible mistake” by paying millions to settle.
He told Times Radio: “I suspect he was pressured by his mother to make that mistake. If he had fought that case, I believe he would have won.
“I believe the case would have been dismissed on a variety of grounds, but he didn’t want to sit through a deposition, or people around him didn’t want to, so he settled the case.
“Often you settle cases not because you’re guilty of what you’re charged, but because you don’t want to admit other things that you’ve done. I feel sorry for Prince Andrew for this reason. Assuming everything they say about him is correct, the woman who accused him was over the age of consent.
“She apparently bragged about it to her friends, and she collected millions and millions of dollars for that.”
Carolyn Andriano, a victim of Epstein who testified at the trial of sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, has claimed Ms Giuffre told her in 2001 that she slept with the Duke. She said her friend texted her from London, saying: “You’ll never guess who I’m with ....” When Ms Giuffre returned to Florida, she showed Ms Andriano the photograph depicting the Duke with his arm around her waist.