The Duchess of York, former wife of Prince Andrew, has been accused of allegedly offering to sell access to him for £500,000 by a tabloid in a video sting.
Fifty-year-old Sarah Ferguson, who has two daughters with her ex-husband, was divorced in 1996. Princess Beatrice, 21, and Princess Eugenie, 20, are fifth and sixth in l
ine respectively to the British throne. Prince Andrew, 50, is Britain’s special representative for international trade and investment since 2001. Before that he had served for 22 years in the Royal Navy.
However, his position as a roving business ambassador is an unpaid one. The News of the World, a weekly tabloid owned by Australian media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, claimed that it had filmed the duchess apparently offering to sell access to Prince Andrew for £500,000.
The video, which has been loaded on its website, showed the duchess promising to introduce an undercover reporter posing as a wealthy businessman to her ex-husband. There was no comment from Buckingham Palace on the video footage of the sting.
The video shows her telling the undercover reporter: “Andrew said to me, ‘Tell him £500,000.’ He knows that he’s had to underwrite me up to now because I’ve got no money. So if you want to meet him in your business, look after me and he’ll look after you... you’ll get it back tenfold.”
However, she insisted that Prince Andrew “is completely whiter than white.” The duchess said her former husband “never does accept a penny for anything.”