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Pressure is mounting on the former Prince Andrew to give evidence to a US congressional committee investigating the disgraced financier and late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggested he should testify.
Keir Starmer declined to comment directly about King Charles III’s disgraced younger brother, but told reporters traveling with him for the Group of 20 – or G20 – summit in Johannesburg that as a “general principle” people should provide evidence to investigators.
“I don’t comment on his particular case,’’ Starmer said. “But as a general principle I’ve held for a very long time is that anybody who has got relevant information in relation to these kind of cases should give that evidence to those that need it.’’
The former prince, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, has so far ignored a request from members of the House Oversight Committee for a “transcribed interview” about his “long-standing friendship” with Epstein.
Andrew was stripped of his royal titles and honours last month as the royal family tried to insulate itself from criticism about his relationship with Epstein.
Starmer’s comments came after US House Representative Robert Garcia of California, the committee’s ranking Democrat, and Representative Suhas Subramanyam, a Democrat from Virginia, said Andrew “continues to hide” from serious questions.
“Our work will move forward with or without him, and we will hold anyone who was involved in these crimes accountable, no matter their wealth, status or political party,” they said in a statement released on Friday. “We will get justice for the survivors.”
Mountbatten-Windsor was accused of having participated in lavish parties hosted by Epstein on his infamous Little Saint James island in the US Virgin Islands, where most of the sexual assaults were reported to have taken place.
Epstein and his long-time partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, reportedly trafficked women, many of them minors, to perform sexual acts on their friends, many of whom were politicians, entrepreneurs and influencers.
Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victims, accused the former UK royal of sexual assault at one of those parties.
Giuffre, who died by suicide in April earlier this year, says she was forced by Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, to perform multiple sexual encounters with Andrew, against her will.
Mountbatten-Windsor was also personally named in new evidence made public late in September, where a flight log was recorded in one of the books Epstein and Maxwell kept, where he was scheduled to visit New York, Epstein and Maxwell’s city of residence, in May 2000.
Additional sources • AP