Who is Jeffrey Epstein? The billionaire paedophile and his links to Prince Andrew

Jeffrey Epstein.

Financier in ‘sex-slave’ case was a fixture on the New York social scene with an exclusive portfolio of friends.

From former United States presidents to Nobel prize-winning scientists, Jeffrey Epstein had a rare knack for collecting acquaintances from the globe's most powerful and rarefied walks of life.

The former Manhattan maths tutor turned multi-millionaire financier first became a fixture on the New York social scene in the early 1990s, amassing a list of contacts - from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump to Kevin Spacey - that competed only with his property portfolio in shiny exclusivity.

It was while moving in these circles that Epstein, a sharp-minded philanthropist who has given millions to scientific research, came into contact with Prince Andrew, probably in 2000 when the Duke of York was on the cusp of a new career as a trade envoy for Britain.

What resulted was a friendship that stood the test of time, at some cost to the man fifth in line to the British throne. As Epstein cut a worthy swathe through high society, flying Clinton to an Aids conference and endowing Harvard with US$30 million, he was also indulging a proclivity for sex with minors.

Many of Epstein's contacts rapidly disappeared when he became the subject of criminal proceedings that eventually resulted in 2008 in an 18-month jail term for soliciting prostitution with an underage girl after an 11-month police investigation.

But Prince Andrew remained unswervingly - even perplexingly - loyal to Epstein. In 2011, a friend of both men told Vanity Fair magazine that Epstein had helped shape the Prince as a more relaxed individual - but after the financier's conviction Andrew had been advised to sever all links. The unnamed friend said the Prince told him: "Leave me alone, Jeffrey's my friend. Being loyal to your friends is a virtue. And I'm going to be loyal to him."

At least until December 2010, that loyalty manifested itself in meetings between the two men, including several holidays. When Epstein was released from jail, the Prince was on a guest list for a dinner at his Fifth Ave mansion which also included Woody Allen. The financier proved a worthy and generous friend, at one point paying 15,000 to help an indebted Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York.

Links between Epstein and the Prince were eventually severed - but the price of Andrew's loyalty was a succession of carefully worded media reports alleging that the royal had met some of the financier's victims and attended parties where sexual exploitation was alleged to have taken place. Such claims were flatly denied by Andrew and robustly batted away by his representatives.

It was not until last week that the allegations were taken a step further by naming the Prince in a document before a court claiming he had sexual relations with one of Epstein's coterie of young women. The Florida District Court document claims that Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the tainted newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell, introduced Andrew to Epstein and acted as a "madame" for the financier - an allegation she strongly denies.

Buckingham Palace has denied the Prince had any involvement. For both Epstein and his one-time royal friend, the matter is nonetheless unlikely to end there. Andrew remains an object of fascination on both sides of the Atlantic while the financier remains dogged by his past and has reportedly settled out of court 14 civil damages claims against him.

While others have labelled him a paedophile, Epstein, who eschews alcohol in favour of Earl Grey tea and yoga, denies he was ever a predator. Shortly after his release from prison, Epstein told the New York Post: "I'm not a sexual predator, I'm an 'offender'. It's the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel."