Getty ImagesThe Metropolitan Police said it is “actively” looking into media reports that Prince Andrew tried to obtain personal information about his accuser Virginia Giuffre through his police protection.
“We are aware of media reporting and are actively looking into the claims made,” the force said on Sunday.
Ms Giuffre, who took her own life earlier this year, said she was among the girls and young women sexually exploited by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his wealthy circle.
Prince Andrew has not commented on the reports, but consistently denies all allegations against him. Buckingham Palace has been contacted for comment.
Ms Giuffre also claimed that she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew on three occasions, including when she was 17 at the home of his friend Ghislaine Maxwell in London, in 2001.
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges related to Epstein, her former boyfriend.
According to the Mail on Sunday, Prince Andrew asked his police protection officer to investigate her just before the newspaper published a photo of Ms Giuffre’s first meeting with the prince in February 2011.
The paper alleged that he gave the officer her date of birth and confidential social security number.
The Sunday Telegraph also claimed that Prince Andrew “sought to dig up dirt” on Ms Giuffre.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, speaking on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, called it “deeply concerning”, adding that if true, “it’s absolutely not the way that close protection officers should be used”.
On Friday, Prince Andrew announced that he was voluntarily deciding not to use his titles and giving up membership of the Order of the Garter – the oldest and most senior order of chivalry in Britain.
He will no longer use his Duke of York title, an honour received from his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II.
The prince had already ceased to be a “working royal” and had lost the use of his HRH title and no longer appeared at official royal events. His role now will be even more diminished.
Emily Maitlis, who conducted the now-infamous BBC Newsnight interview in 2019 with the prince, said the move had been “a long time coming”, adding: “Six years has been quite a long time to wait for this.”
In the interview, the prince claimed he had severed all ties with Epstein in 2010 during a visit to his New York home.
Speaking on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Maitlis said she felt “quite sick” when emails emerged that had been sent in February 2011 from the prince to Epstein, suggesting their friendship had not ended.
She had questioned Prince Andrew on his decision to “spend four days – four nights – in a convicted paedophile’s home” to end their friendship, to which he had responded he had a tendency to be “too honourable”.
The February 2011 emails including one from the prince that read: “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!”, suggesting he had stayed in touch with him.
“The tenor of it, the idea not just that he was saying we’re in this together, but signing off ‘let’s play some more soon’, does not suggest that he had ever finished that friendship, that he had ever broken off with Epstein,” Maitlis said.
“You’re left really questioning, why he said that, whether the conversation ever existed, and how much more there is in that interview that we have to now go back and question,” the journalist added.
Prince Andrew has faced a series of scandals over recent years, including making an out-of-court settlement with Ms Giuffre in 2022, after she had brought a civil case against him.
A posthumous memoir by Ms Giuffre to be released next week is likely to cast further attention on the prince’s involvement with her and Epstein.
On Friday evening, Ms Giuffre’s brother Sky Roberts told BBC Newsnight his sister would have been “very proud” of the latest development regarding Prince Andrew’s titles, but that he would like the King to go a step further and remove the title of prince.
“I think anybody that was implicated… should have some sort of responsibility and accountability for these survivors,” he said.
Former BBC royal correspondent Jenny Bond told the BBC she believed “public clamour for more action against Andrew is going to continue because these headlines are going to continue”.
“We have to remember at the heart of all this is not really the royal family at all – it’s the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, and Virginia Giuffre being one of them.”