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A person appearing to be the former Prince Andrew emailed Ghislaine Maxwell asking if she had any “new inappropriate friends” for him and discussed procuring girls ahead of an official royal visit to Peru, the latest Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice have shown.
The emails will further deepen the controversy around the conduct of the former prince — now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — following previous claims that he had sex on three occasions with one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, starting when she was 17.
King Charles stripped Mountbatten-Windsor, his younger brother, of his royal titles on October 30 and forced him to give up his home near Windsor Castle as part of what Buckingham Palace called “censures” over his conduct.
Revelations about Mountbatten-Windsor’s behaviour have proved a severe embarrassment to the king as he seeks to establish himself following the 70-year rule of his mother Elizabeth II, who died in September 2022.
The latest revelations are particularly sensitive because they suggest Mountbatten-Windsor made arrangements to meet young women when travelling on business funded from official travel budgets.
The earliest of the latest emails was sent in August 2001 to Maxwell, an associate of Epstein, from someone signing off as “A” saying that he was at the “Balmoral Summer Camp for the Royal Family”.
The British royal family goes to the Balmoral estate, near Aberdeen, every summer. A wrote to Maxwell: “How’s LA? Have you found me some new inappropriate friends?”
The email was sent shortly after Giuffre later claimed Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender, and Maxwell first brought her to London to have sex with Andrew in March 2001.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence, imposed in 2021, for her part in Epstein’s sex abuse of girls and young women. Epstein was found dead in his prison cell while awaiting trial on new sex crime charges in 2019.
Maxwell replied to the email, apparently sarcastically, saying she had been able to find only “appropriate friends” and offering to set up some “church meetings” for him. In a reply, the original emailer wrote that he was “distraught” and mentioned that he had just left the Royal Navy. Mountbatten-Windsor left the Royal Navy in July 2001, less than three weeks before the date of the email.
The emails were exchanged ahead of an official trip to Peru that the then-prince undertook in March 2002.
The files contain emails exchanged between a person who appears to be Mountbatten-Windsor, Maxwell and a person called Juan Esteban Ganoza. They include evidence that Maxwell had encouraged Ganoza to find “girls” for Mountbatten-Windsor.
Ganoza replied by asking how old the person in question was and saying he would “try” to find someone. The person appearing to be Mountbatten-Windsor replied: “As for girls well I leave that entirely to you and Juan Estoban [sic]!” Maxwell subsequently wrote to Ganoza making it clear what Mountbatten-Windsor would want.
She wrote: “Some sight-seeing, some 2-legged sight seeing (read intelligent pretty fun and from good families) and he will be very happy.”
However, Maxwell stressed the importance of keeping the visitor’s activities in Peru secret.
She wrote: “I know I can rely on you to show him a wonderful time and that you will only introduce him to friends that you can trust and rely on to be friendly and discreet and fun. He does not want to read about any trip in the papers whom or what he saw.”
Neither Mountbatten-Windsor’s spokesperson nor Buckingham Palace immediately replied to a request to comment on the latest revelations.
Mountbatten-Windsor has previously denied all allegations against him and said that he does not remember meeting Giuffre, who died by suicide earlier this year.
However, he paid her a substantial, undisclosed settlement in 2022 in the US after she brought a legal action accusing him of sexual assault.
