Newly released emails reveal that the Duke of York told convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2010 that “it would be good to catch up in person” months after Epstein’s release from prison. The correspondence, made public on Friday, comes two days after Andrew was stripped of his titles and removed from the official roll of the peerage.
In an email exchange on April 15, 2010, Epstein suggested that Andrew meet former JP Morgan executive Jes Staley. Andrew replied that he would not be in the UK but would “make sure I meet [Staley] soon on another trip.” He added, “Also I have no immediate plans to drop by New York but I think I should at some stage soon. I’ll look and see if I can make a couple of days before the summer. It would be good to catch up in person.”
The pair were photographed together in Central Park in December 2010, a meeting Andrew later called a “wrong decision.” In his 2019 BBC Newsnight interview, he claimed the visit was to end contact, saying he wanted to do it in person rather than “over the telephone.” He stayed at Epstein’s New York mansion for several days.
Separate court documents released in January showed a “member of the British royal family,” believed to be Andrew, emailed Epstein: “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!” The emails were unsealed as part of a 2023 legal case between the US Virgin Islands and JP Morgan, which settled without admitting liability.
The documents also reveal that JP Morgan warned the US government about over $1bn in transactions linked to Epstein possibly related to human trafficking. Pressure on Buckingham Palace to act against Andrew intensified after the posthumous publication of Virginia Giuffre’s memoir, in which she repeated allegations of being forced to have sex with Andrew when she was 17. Andrew denies the allegations.
