What just happened
- Covid isolation was cut to five days in England after modelling found that two thirds of positive cases were no longer infectious after this point.
- Russian officials said they had reached a dead end in efforts to persuade Nato to rule out Ukrainian membership.
- A Chinese woman forced by Covid quarantine to move in with her blind date became an overnight sensation when her video diary went viral.
If Prince Andrew settled, how would he pay? The question arises because the New York judge in Virginia Giuffre’s sexual abuse case against the Queen’s favourite son has thrown out his lawyers’ bid to have it dismissed. Settling out of court now looks like his least bad option, and by the standards of princes up to their necks in costly legal battles Andrew is not rich.
As a result, there is a plausible scenario in which some of the funds used to end a case brought by a woman claiming Andrew raped her when she was 17 come ultimately from the British public purse.
Split hairs. The prince denies Giuffre’s charges but has fought them only on technicalities – which District Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected one by one. Giuffre’s suit has been brought under a new New York law that opens a two-year window for victims of historical sex abuse to seek compensation. It alleges battery and emotional distress as a result of being trafficked to have sex with Andrew and being sexually abused by him in London, New York and the Caribbean between 2000 and 2002.
Andrew’s team tried arguing that the new law was unconstitutional; that Giuffre’s claims were vague and “duplicative”; and that a 2009 deal with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex criminal, meant she was not entitled to sue in the first place.
Kaplan had already rejected the argument based on the 2009 deal. He called the new law reasonable and said the alleged abuses, if they occurred, were “intolerable in a civilised community”.
The implications. Andrew could now proceed to trial or try to appeal the judge’s ruling. But
- to appeal he would need Kaplan’s permission, and there is no sign it would be granted;
- the judge has clearly had enough of technicalities and wants the case resolved out of court or before a jury;
- regardless of the merits of the case a trial could prove disastrous for Andrew, who in his infamous Newsnight interview last year showed no instinct or ability to empathise with Epstein’s victims.
Hence the likelihood of an eventual bid to settle. That will be expensive, not least because so far Giuffre has said what she wants from the case is not money but an acknowledgment of her charges. Hence the spotlight on Andrew’s assets.
- He’s said to have an annual income of £270,000 consisting of his £20,000 navy pension and £250,000 a year from the Queen’s supposedly private funds, most of which are generated by the 700 year-old Duchy of Lancaster.
- He has no property of his own except, for a few days more, an £18 million Swiss chalet which he has now been forced to sell and for which last week he was reported to have found a buyer.
What other assets Andrew may or may not own is unclear and now that he’s withdrawn from public duties he’s under little pressure to disclose them. But his costs are daunting and growing.
- His legal defence is estimated to have cost £2 million so far – a bill likely to treble should he insist on a trial.
- A settlement could limit lawyers’ fees but cost another £10 million, according to today’s Sun.
The Queen has reportedly been paying Andrew’s legal bills since last year. If a settlement is to be funded from the sale of the chalet, £10 million may be as high as he can go because he still owed £6.6 million on the property until late last year, and that debt that may also have to be settled from the proceeds of the sale.
To the extent the chalet was bought with the Queen’s money and gets Andrew out of his present predicament, worries about misuse of taxpayers’ money will linger: the Duchy of Lancaster pays neither corporation tax nor capital gains tax, writes David McClure, author of The Queen’s True Worth, and “is much less private than many would have us believe”.
Who’s buying the chalet? We may never know. Switzerland has no land registry and is coy about the beneficial ownership of its prime properties. But it’s a question worth pursuing.
