Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor received a private massage while naked in a bedroom at Buckingham Palace, with payment made by cheque from a royal household account, according to a report by the Daily Mail.
Professional masseuse Monique Giannelloni told the newspaper she was brought into the late Queen Elizabeth II’s official residence in June 2000 after being recommended to Andrew by Ghislaine Maxwell.
Ms. Giannelloni said she was allowed into the palace without undergoing security checks and was escorted to Andrew’s room.
“I got to the room and Andrew was stood there in a robe,” she told the Daily Mail. “After saying ‘Hello’, he disappeared to the bathroom and came back in the nude.
“I averted my eyes and I was quite embarrassed.”
She said the then Duke of York “draped himself across my massage table,” adding that it “sent a fresh wave of nervous energy coursing through me.”
Despite the initial embarrassment, she said she had no issues during the appointment.
“I was so nervous, I was in Buckingham Palace, I was going through the motions and doing what I knew and if there was anything untoward, I don’t really remember noticing that except for the fact he took the towel off very fast,” she said.
“I can’t actually say anything bad about Prince Andrew in my experience on that day. I only massaged him once.”
Ms. Giannelloni, who is from South Africa, provided the Daily Mail with an invoice showing that Buckingham Palace settled the £75 fee directly from a Coutts bank account. The cheque was signed by Andrew’s then-personal assistant, Charlotte Manley.
She said she was first contacted by Maxwell’s secretary in New York and later met Maxwell, who told her, “I am going to introduce you to someone more famous than God.”
“I didn’t know who Ghislaine or Epstein were,” Ms. Giannelloni said. “I obviously knew Prince Andrew but at the time I had no idea about their associations or what they were involved in.”
During one visit to Maxwell, she said Jeffrey Epstein was present and that the pair discussed purchasing an island for around £20 million.
The massage took place months before Andrew formally assumed his role as the United Kingdom’s trade envoy in 2001, a position he held until 2011, when he stepped down amid scrutiny over his friendship with Epstein.