the times | Wednesday February 16 2022 5News
The Duke of York is yet to sell the Swiss
ski chalet that is likely to finance his
legal settlement with Virginia Giuffre.
There is mounting speculation over
how the Duke of York will foot the costs
of the estimated £10 million agreement.
After royal experts insisted the
Queen was unlikely to bail out her son,
the sale of his chalet in the Swiss resort
of Verbier has been earmarked as the
most likely source of funding.
It emerged last month that a buyer
had been found for the £18 million
property — which the duke had bought
with his ex-wife Sarah, Duchess of York
— after a long-running legal dispute
was resolved. He purchased the proper-
ty for £16.6 million from the French so-
cialite Isabelle de Rouvre and is said to
have financed part of it with a loan.
However, De Rouvre later sued him
for failing to pay the final instalment of
£5 million, with the matter only settled
last November. The resolution allowed
a sale to go ahead. Sources last night
said the deal was in its “final stages”.
How much Andrew will be left with
after the sale remains unknown given
that the mortgage was reported to be
£13 million.
A joint statement attached to the fil-
ing in the US district court in Manhat-
tan said the amount to be paid by An-
drew would remain confidential.
Court documents said he will make a
“substantial donation to Ms Giuffre’s
charity in support of victims’ rights”.
Experts said it was likely that the
compensation payment had been madeOne princely donation to
charity for abuse victims
Will Pavia New YorkVirginia Giuffre founded a charity for
victims of sexual abuse in 2015, but it
was not officially launched until No-
vember last year and has so far not been
accepting donations.
It will now receive a “substantial do-
nation” from a man whose lawyers
painted Giuffre as a profiteer who had
“initiated a baseless lawsuit” in the
hope of a “payday at his expense”.
Under the terms of a provisional deal
announced yesterday, the Duke of York
will make a large contribution to Soar,
which stands for Speak Out, Act, Re-
claim, joining other supporters of the
foundation, including Boies Schiller
Flexner, the law firm that handled her
case against him pro bono.
Soar’s mission is to help those who
have suffered sexual abuse to tell their
stories and to campaign against aspects
of the criminal justice system in the US,
particularly the statute of limitations in
cases of sexual assault and sexual
abuse, which varies from state to state.
Victims’ advocacy groups argue that
survivors of abuse often do not report
their experiences until their forties or
fifties, by which time they are unable to
bring legal action in many states. In
New York the age limit for such claimswas 23 until recently. It changed to 55 in
2019 under a reform that also instituted
a one-year window of time, later ex-
tended until 2021, under which victims
of historic childhood sexual abuse
could bring legal claims for damages. It
was under this provision that Giuffre
mounted her lawsuit against the duke.
On Soar’s website, Giuffre is de-
scribed as “perhaps the most promi-
nent survivor of Jeffrey Epstein’s
crimes” and its mission “took shape” as
she underwent her “personal transfor-
mation from victim to survivor”.
Giuffre has said she was sexually
abused by a family friend at the age of
seven, and later ran away from home,
where she was picked up by Ron Ep-
pinger, who ran an escort agency and
was prosecuted by the FBI for sex traf-
ficking. At the age of 16 she met Ghis-
laine Maxwell, who brought her to Ep-
stein. She alleges they trafficked her to
a series of prominent men, including
the duke. He has denied the claim.
Giuffre officially launched Soar on
the eve of Maxwell’s criminal trial, in
which prosecutors named her as a vic-
tim in one of two sex trafficking char-
ges. After Maxwell was convicted for
sex trafficking and three other charges,
Giuffre said: “Others must be held ac-
countable. I have faith that they will be.”have to use the proceeds from the sale of his chalet in Verbier, top, to meet the cost of his settlement with Giuffre, aboveVirginia Giuffre’s settlement will bar
her from speaking publicly about her
claims until after the celebrations for
the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee are over,
The Times understands.
The carefully worded statement filed
with a New York court on a proposed
settlement indicates that Giuffre, 38,
will continue to tell her story publicly
and even suggests that the Duke of
York will support her in “the fight
against the evils of sex trafficking”.
But she will be expected to wait until
later in the year — an allowance appar-
ently made to limit the damage to the
royal family during the celebrations.
Sources familiar with the deal said
there would be a period of silence when
neither side would be able to go beyond
the words of the terse statement.
One lawyer not involved in the case,
however, said the settlement would
allow Giuffre to write a book, to be pub-
lished at Christmas, telling her story.
“Ordinarily, you would have a com-
plete non-disclosure [agreement] on
both sides,” Mitchell Epner, a formervately on a manuscript, he said. “She
will be free to say whatever she believes
the truth is about Prince Andrew.”
Giuffre has already written a novel
called The Billionaire’s Playboy Club. In
its last paragraph, the author declares
that “if some girl off the streets of Flor-
ida, like me, can stand up against the
tyrants that run the deep pockets of our
world, then anyone can”.federal prosecutor who is an attorney
with the New York firm Rottenberg
Lipman Rich, said. In this case, “since
it’s a settlement in the context of, on its
face, an apology from Prince Andrew,”
he suspected that Giuffre “has agreed
not to say anything [but] she will be in a
position to write a book, probably for
this Christmas season”.
The deal would allow her to work pri-Giuffre to keep quiet during jubilee
Will Pavia New YorkThe Queen receives the ambassador of Estonia in a virtual audience yesterdayNews
Sale of ski chalet in
Verbier could help to
finance settlement
Mario Ledwith, Charlotte Wace
Jonathan Amesyesterday by the duke, or by someone
on his behalf, into a third-party escrow
account, to be released upon the filing
of the dismissal.
This year legal experts told The Times
that the Queen would not risk contrib-
uting towards a financial settlement
because it would be too damaging to
her reputation.
The duke’s finances have long been
mysterious, with his only known in-
come a stipend of £250,000 from the
Queen and a £20,000 navy pension.
The chalet is the only property
owned by Andrew, who lives in Royal
Lodge, the 30-room stately home set in
nearly 100 acres of Windsor Great
Park, on a long-term lease.
A glimpse into his finances emerged
last year in documents leaked to
Bloomberg revealing that his friend,
the Tory donor David Rowland, helped
him to pay off a £1.5 million loan from
Banque Havilland, the Luxembourg
bank owned by Rowland’s family.
His luxurious lifestyle earned him
the nickname “Airmiles Andy”. In 2020,
he bought a £220,000 Bentley to add to
his two Range Rovers. His watches in-
clude a £150,000 Patek Philippe.
He is also likely to be providing finan-
cial support to his ex-wife, who also
lives at Royal Lodge, and their children
Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatri-
ce. Security is another expensive outgo-
ing. It is unclear who has been covering
the cost of protecting Royal Lodge since
Andrew stepped down as a working
member of the royal family. Thames
Valley police refused to comment but
the cost is likely to be at least £500,
a year, according to security experts.US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE/PA; CYRIL ZINGARO/EPA; BACKGRIDweight in gold to the Queen’