Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell might have dated at some point, a friend of the two has claimed in an interview for the upcoming ITV documentary, "Ghislaine, Prince Andrew and the Paedophile", reported The Telegraph.
“She described Andrew as being her friend, not Jeffrey’s… I got the sense that Prince Andrew and Ghislaine had probably been girlfriend and boyfriend in the past. They had an easy warmth around each other,” New York-based British investment banker Euan Rellie was cited as saying.
Ghislaine, Prince Andrew and the Paedophile, fronted by ITV journalist Ranvir Singh, is to explore Prince Andrew’s alleged role in the sex trafficking scandal.
The royal, who has since stepped down from official duties and been stripped of his military roles and royal patronages, faces the possibility of a civil court case after being accused by Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre (nee Roberts) of sexual abuse when she was 17. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing, claiming he has “no recollection of ever meeting her”.
Euan Rellie attended the University of Oxford with the 60-year-old British socialite and ex-girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, who was found guilty on 29 December of recruiting underage girls to be sexually abused by the late billionaire financier between 1994 and 2004 at his various properties.
She is now facing sentencing on 28 June, with the prospect of spending up to 60 years in a US jail.
Rellie was purportedly a guest at dinner parties that Maxwell and Epstein hosted in the US. As he recalled being invited to the financier’s New York home, he was cited as saying that the socialite admitted that it was “for my friend Prince Andrew”.
A former Royal protection officer, Paul Page, has made similar claims, revealing that he and his colleagues had wondered if Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell, a frequent guest to Buckingham Palace, were “intimate”.
“I first met Ghislaine Maxwell in 2001. From the way she was allowed to enter and exit the palace at will, we realised and suspected that she may have had an intimate relationship with Prince Andrew. A colleague of mine remembered her coming in four times in one day. She kept coming in and out, in and out,” stated Page.
The banker who was jailed for fraud in 2009 was cited by The Sun as adding that Prince Andrew’s female friends, including Ghislaine Maxwell, rarely signed in.
‘Weird’ History with Teddy Bears
A member of the Royalty and Specialist Protection Command between 1998 and 2004, Page added that the Duke of York had a bed with “50 or 60” stuffed teddy bears, and would “shout and scream” if his vast collection was knocked out of place.
All palace maids were purportedly provided with a laminated picture of each bear to ensure it was placed back in its original position.
“There was a card the inspector showed us in a drawer and it was a picture of these bears all in situ on the bed,” Page told the documentary.
Writer Elizabeth Day, who had become acquainted with Prince Andrew’s “strange” teddy bear collection in 2019 at Buckingham Palace, wrote in YOU magazine in 2019:
“I was told to wait in a corridor where my only other companion was an oversized teddy bear squashed into a seat. When I was ushered in to meet Prince Andrew, I asked him about it. He sniggered and told me it had been a wedding gift from his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson. It seemed rather strange to me that a grown man should be so amused by the presence of a stuffed toy, but I suppose the English upper classes have a long history with teddy bears used as transitional objects to express emotions they might feel uncomfortable with.”
“It was weird,” the woman added.
17 January 2022, 11:06 GMT
This comes as Prince Andrew, who remains Duke of York, will no longer be known as His Royal Highness “in any official capacity”, having been stripped of his military titles and royal patronages “with the Queen's approval and agreement,” according to Buckingham palace.
The move followed the failure of the royal's lawyers to persuade a US judge to dismiss Virginia Giuffre’s civil lawsuit against him.