Jeffrey Epstein was told to cut all ties with Andrew Mountbatten Windsor over concerns the former prince was tarnishing his reputation, documents have revealed.
The deceased paedophile financier, who was trying to repair his image after serving thirteen months for soliciting prostitution with a minor, was warned that associating with the former Duke of York would be ‘disastrous’.
The communications with PR firm Osborne & Partners are among a 20,000-page trove released by the Epstein estate.
The documents have also revealed that Epstein sought to influence online search results to distance him from his convictions, while spotlighting his ‘philanthropic work’.
Epstein’s communications with the PR firm include a memo written in June 2011 – nearly two years after being released from jail in July 2009.
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He had served almost 13 months of his 18-month sentence for the solicitation of prostitution and for the solicitation of prostitution with a minor.
The memo gives advice on reputation management and draws attention to his relationship with Andrew Windsor.
When it was written, the pair had recently been photographed walking through Central Park together in December 2010, just five months after Epstein’s release.
The memo says ‘it is disastrous for you to be seen in any way to facilitate his lifestyle, or to help with his well documented issues.’
It warned that the press was pursuing Epstein ‘as a means to attack Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’.
The memo added that associating with them was ‘disastrous’ for his image and that he should ‘studiously avoid any involvement whatsoever with the couple’.
The PR firm said another ‘urgent priority’ was ‘cleaning up’ the results on major search engines like Google.
‘Today, when anyone types in your name, a majority of the first few pages of the results are references to the charges, to paedophilia, to Prince Andrew, to unflattering stories,’ it said.
‘’We have hired an excellent team of Israeli experts for other clients, and there are many firms that claim to be able to optimise results this way but fail to deliver.’
The document also featured a step-by-step guide on how to ‘restore your profile’.
Andrew Mountbatten was recently stripped of his titles and booted out of Royal Lodge after his associations with Epstein, who died in custody in August 2019, became too damaging for the royal family.
The former prince has denied the sexual allegations made against him and ever having met Virginia Giuffre, his accuser, who died by suicide in April.
In 2022, he reached an out of court settlement with Giuffre, who claimed she’d been forced to have sex with the disgraced prince three times.
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