Cartoon by Marian Kamensky

‘Hard up’ Andrew may turn to family and friends to help pay settlement

The Guardian: The size of Prince Andrew’s settlement with Virginia Giuffre may be undisclosed but lawyers say it is certain to run into the millions, with estimates ranging from £5m to £14m.

Such eye-watering figures have prompted calls for the source of the funds to be made public amid suggestions that the Queen will have to bail out her son.

Andrew is known to be trying to sell his £17m ski chalet in Verbier, Switzerland, but it is understood to be heavily mortgaged and the net proceeds are unlikely to cover the cost of the settlement.

Andrew’s only publicly known regular income was a £249,000-a-year allowance from the Queen to fund his Buckingham Palace office while undertaking royal duties. He would also have a small pension from his time serving with the Royal Navy, a job he left in 2001.

Now, with no royal duties to perform, it is not known what, if anything, he receives from his mother.

Sunninghill Park, Andrew’s former marital home in Windsor, was bought in 2007 by Timor Kulibayev, the son-in-law of the president of Kazakhstan, for £15m – £3m more than the asking price. Since 2004, Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, have lived together at Royal Lodge, a Grade II-listed house in Windsor Great Park that is a former residence of the Queen Mother.

A spokesperson for Kulibayev said it was a “commercial, arm’s length transaction” using “entirely legitimate” funds.

David McClure, the author of The Queen’s True Worth: Unravelling the public and private finances of Queen Elizabeth II, said Andrew did not have sufficient resources for the settlement and would have to turn to his mother for help, though favours from wealthy friends should not be ruled out either.

“The very fact he’s down to selling the chalet does indicate that he’s not mega wealthy. He wouldn’t be selling it if he was mega wealthy,” McClure said. “[As for] other sources of revenue – more than likely he’s got his own portfolio of private shares. Given his lifestyle, given the financiers he mixes with, it would be amazing if he didn’t have his own portfolio of shares.”

If the Queen is pitching in to help her son, it would not be the first time: she reportedly helped Prince Charles with his £17m divorce settlement with Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 >>>