Prince Andrew’s sale of a gifted home to Kazakh billionaire and subsequent sexual misconduct allegations

James PaTTERSON Prince Andrew had long since sold the home, which he and Sarah had received as a gift after their 1986 wedding. He got into hot water when it was revealed that the buyer, a Kazakh billion- aire named Timur Kulibayev, had paid three million pounds more than the home’s asking price. For her part, Sarah Ferguson announced that she was mov- ing into a thirteen-million-pound ski chalet in Switzerland. It was a fitting end to the long, sometimes sordid story of the prince’s marriage. But it was not the end of the scandals that seemed always to be swirling around the prince. On January 2, 2015, Virginia Roberts's allegations about her relationship with the prince—and the photo of him with his arm around Roberts's waist—appeared in the press. Prince Andrew was forced to cut short a skiing holiday to confer with his mother, the queen, and to issue a statement denying Rob- erts’s allegations—a step that was widely seen as being without precedent for a member of the royal family. That same month, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the prince was again forced to “reiterate and to reaf- firm” the repeated denials made by Buckingham Palace that he had any sort of sexual relationship with Roberts, who had announced in papers filed at the start of the year that Prince Andrew has a “sexual interest in feet.” “My focus is on my work,” Prince Andrew said at the time. Asked by a reporter, “Will you be making a statement?” the — ‘ prince refused to answer. A few days later, Virginia Roberts signed a sworn statement in which she said, “I did have sexual contact with him as I have ~ described here — under oath. Given what he knows and has seen, © 1 was hoping that he would simply voluntarily tell the truth about : ‘f 276 everything. I hope my at under oath about the cont; According to several r to the prince, asking him Reportedly, Buckingham F “I knew he was a men just called him ‘Andy,” Ro news from Maxwell that I- day, Epstein told me I was me ‘to exceed’ everything I whatever Prince Andrew w Signing her name to the under penalty of perjury th That spring, Prince Anc in South Florida ordered t stricken from civil-court re ceedings, these lurid detai cluded. Once again, Buckin prince’s involvement in any taining to Roberts. But tha: BBC program Panorama wa; tion into the prince’s dealing As of this writing, the in Barry Krischer “I have no intention of beir Barry Krischer said in 2016 _ asked about Jeffrey Epstein. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022173