Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein has stayed at Sandringham and holidayed with the Prince in Thailand, while Andrew has visited his luxurious New York townhouse at least twice.

Police in Florida are so concerned by claims that the bachelor financier had sexual encounters with under-age girls at his exclusive Palm Beach villa that they have passed the case files to the FBI.

Epstein, 54, leads a hedonistic lifestyle that has troubled Royal courtiers ever since he was introduced to the Prince by their friend Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell.

According to official documents seen by this newspaper, Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter has asked the FBI to determine whether Epstein broke laws designed to protect children from prostitution and pornography.

The documents reveal that Epstein was the subject of an 11-month undercover investigation by police after a complaint in 2005 from the stepmother of a 14-year-old girl, who claimed she was paid £150 to give him an erotic massage at his flamingo-pink villa.

The girl is said to have been taken there by 18-year-old student Haley Robson, who claims in a sworn statement that she was recruited at the age of 17 to provide the billionaire with a £100 nude massage.

One of the girls ‘cried hysterically', according to a police report, as she recalled how she was recruited to provide services for Epstein when she was 16.

When police searched the villa, they say they found a pink and green couch in the master bedroom, matching a description by the alleged victims.

Palm Beach police believe that the relatively light charge, which makes no mention of sex with minors, was the result of intimidation by private inves-tigators and high-powered lawyers representing Epstein.

One of his legal team, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, told The Mail on Sunday that Epstein had passed a lie detector test showing he was innocent of all allegations. The financier had paid for massages, but had not engaged in sex or erotic massages with any minors, the lawyer insisted. He said that the girl who accused Epstein of forcible sex ‘had a long record of lying, theft and blaming others for her crimes'.

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