Legal peril for Prince Andrew puts focus on who will pay

Prince Andrew has been stripped of his military titles, royal honorifics and any illusion that his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, will stand by him in a sexual abuse lawsuit now moving forward in U.S. federal court.Assets including a chalet in Switzerland could soon be gone as well, sold off to raise cash for legal fees and the prospect of a multimillion-dollar judgment or settlement in a case alleging that he had sex with a teenager without her consent two decades ago.Andrew quietly cleared the way to sell his seven-bedroom Swiss lodge with an indoor swimming pool late last year, paying millions he owed the previous owner to remove a court claim that would have impeded putting the property on the market.The Duke of York had for years failed to pay the final $8 million installment of the $29 million purchase, citing a lack of funds, said Isabelle de Rouvre, a French national who sold the property to Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, in 2014.They finally came forward with the money two months ago, de Rouvre said, “only because they want to sell.” Noting Andrew’s mounting legal troubles, she said in an interview with The Washington Post, “you can see where [any proceeds] are going to go.”A spokesperson for Prince Andrew declined to comment for this article “on what are private financial matters.”The Swiss property is one of the few obvious sources of revenue available for a prince long accused of living beyond his means and associating with problematic elites, including Jeffrey Epstein, the American financier and convicted sex offender accused of arranging sexual encounters for Andrew.What’s next for Prince Andrew, cast out into the royal wilderness?Andrew has repeatedly denied the accusations against him. The move to sell the chalet certainly suggests “he is short of money,” McClure said.His only known source of ongoing income is a modest $27,000 military pension from his service as a helicopter pilot in the Royal Navy, which included missions in the Falklands War.In the past, he has reportedly relied on largesse from the queen, with an allowance drawn from income on the Duchy of Lancaster estate, a sprawling collection of revenue-generating properties in England.Andrew and Ferguson, though divorced, live together at Royal Lodge, a property leased to the prince under terms that required him to invest in renovations but not to pay rent.Andrew’s most lucrative known transaction remains one of the most controversial: the sale of Sunninghill Park, a 665-acre estate near Windsor Castle given to him as a wedding present by the queen.The 12-bedroom complex sat on the market for five years following Andrew’s divorce.