Prince Andrew has secured enough funding to support himself and stay at the Royal Lodge, weeks after King Charles cut him off and ordered him out of the sprawling property, according to reports.
Exactly where the Duke of York got the funding remains unclear — his only known source of steady income is a Royal Navy Pension — but the crown’s financial director approved that everything was coming from legitimate sources, the Sunday Times reported.
Andrew — a royal pariah since he was linked to financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sinister sex trafficking ring — has been living off a hefty allowance from the king’s personal wealth in the years since he became an outcast.
Among his expenses are more than $3 million annually worth of personal security — which last month King Charles said he wasn’t willing to cover anymore, and ordered Andrew out of Royal Lodge into the smaller Frogmore Cottage if he couldn’t start paying his own way.
But Andrew did not cooperate, remaining in the 30-room mansion on the grounds of Windsor Castle while apparently securing enough cash to keep out of the nearby 5-bedroom cottage previously occupied by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Andrew has lived at Royal Lodge since 2004, and shares the space with his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson.
Beyond his royal allowance, Andrew has been known to generate income over the years through a number of real estate deals, including a nearly $20 million sale of his Sunninghill Park mansion in 2007, and a swiss ski chalet which he sold in 2022, according to the Times.
He also took out a loan worth about $1.9 million from a Luxembourg bank in 2017, which was paid off within days by multimillionaire financier David Rowland.
Andrew’s connections to Epstein are more than enough to raise eyebrows about a sudden acquisition of cash, according to one royal biographer.
“Jeffrey Epstein introduced him to useful business contacts. He also developed lucrative connections in Central Asia and the Middle East during his ten years as special representative for trade and investment,” said author Andrew Lownie, according to the Times.
“There have long been concerns about how he has since used those contacts. Now he is no longer a working royal, there is far less scrutiny of his business activities — but it is an area that needs to be looked at,” he added.
Andrew was sued by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre in 2021, who alleged she was forced to have sex several times as a teen. The suit was settled out of court for an undisclosed multi-million dollar amount the next year.
