It wasn’t some big mystery. In February, Prince Andrew reached a financial settlement with Virginia Giuffre because the prospect of a deposition – much less a trial – was enough to scare the bejesus out of him. Andrew’s lawyers were in negotiations with Giuffre’s lawyers as soon as the judge rejected Andrew’s attempt to get the case dismissed. The fact that £12 million-plus was magically “found” for the settlement was also not a mystery – as we discussed last month, it was a blatant quid pro quo between Andrew, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles. News of the settlement came just after the Queen had backed “Queen Consort Camilla” on her Accession Day. Meaning, Charles agreed to sign off on handing Andrew the money he needed to settle with Guiffre, but only if the Queen agreed to the Camilla statement. Now, to underline all of those assumptions:

The Prince of Wales will loan the Duke of York several million pounds to enable him to pay off his accuser ahead of a court-imposed deadline, it has been claimed. The Duke, 62, reached an out of court settlement with Virginia Roberts Giuffre last month, which meant he no longer faced a jury trial on claims that he sexually abused and raped her on three separate occasions when she was 17.

The financial deal is understood to exceed £12 million, including £2 million contribution to Ms Giuffre’s sex trafficking charity thought to have been paid by the Queen. New York judge Lewis Kaplan gave the Duke until March 17 to make the full payment – warning that if he failed to do so, the case would go to trial.

The Duke is in the process of selling his only known asset, a Verbier ski chalet he bought with his ex-wife, Sarah, Duchess of York, in 2014 as a “family investment” with a mortgage and private funding from the Queen. Prince Charles agreed to stump up the bulk of the money the Duke owes Ms Giuffre on the grounds that he repays it when he has sold the chalet, according to The Sun.

“There were family discussions about how to ‘take a little from here and a little from there’,” a source told the newspaper. “Once it hits his bank account, he can pay back his brother and whoever else has lent him money. But that payment (to Ms Giuffre) has to be paid on time. He can’t rely on selling the chalet. Too many things can go wrong and the court won’t wait for property queries.”

A friend of the Duke added: “He has no income or money to repay a bank loan, so the family is the only way to guarantee the payment.”

If he fails to repay the loan, it will allegedly be deducted from his share of inheritance from the Queen, who has also privately funded his legal fight to the tune of millions of pounds.

[From The Telegraph]

“He has no income or money to repay a bank loan” – what’s strange about that statement is that Andrew has received a number of mysterious loans in recent years, most of them from Tory associates with banking connections. No one really knows what Andrew did – or what kind of access he provided – to get those loans, and clearly, he hasn’t paid those back either. As for Charles giving him the money and Andrew not being able to “count” on selling the Verbier chalet… extremely messy and questionable. I thought Andrew had already secured the sale of the chalet? Why is there a hang-up with that money? Did he sell the chalet to a Russian oligarch whose assets were seized? And again, does Andrew even have to pay back the loan from Charles? Doubtful.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar, WENN, Backgrid.