Feb 17, 2022: There has been a public call for Queen Elizabeth’s son Prince Andrew to “live out his retirement in ignominy” after reportedly settling a sexual assault lawsuit for a whopping 12 million pound ($16.3 million).

The lawyers for Virginia Giuffre, said Tuesday that the two sides had agreed to settle out of court, which could save Andrew from public humiliation. Giuffre has said she was forced to have sex with Andrew when she was 17 and a minor under U.S. law, after meeting her through the late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was prosecuted as a sex offender.

Epstein committed suicide in jail during the trial. The prince has not been charged and has denied the allegations. The Daily Telegraph reports that Andrew had to pay 10 million pounds to Guiuffre and 2 million to a charity for victims of sex trafficking.

The settlement raises questions about who is paying the bill for the perenially cash-strapped prince, according to a Telegraph report the compensation will come from one of his mother Queen Elizabeth II’s private properties. The scandal has threatened to cast a shadow over the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee this year, marking her 70th anniversary on the throne.

It also means Andrew, 61, will no longer be questioned under the oath of office of Giuffre’s lawyers, who were due to travel to London next month.

Following the settlement announcement, the British media said, the prince was now “finished”, and called on him to withdraw entirely from public life, after he was already stripped of his honorary military ranks and the title of “His Royal Highness”.

An editorial in The Sun said, “A man truly determined to clear his name of such heinous allegations would have fought tooth and nail… and then, if he won, tried to rebuild his life,”

“That is all over. Andrew is finished — undone by his insufferable arrogance, entitlement and staggering naivety.

“He must retreat entirely from public life and live out his retirement in ignominy,” it added.

The Prince was also ridiculed for claiming he had never met Giuffre, querying why he had agreed in that case to settle for such an apparently large amount, and pointing to a photograph of the pair together when she was 17. Others called for transparency on where the settlement money is coming from, whether from the queen’s private income or from official sources effectively backed by British taxpayers.

Giuffre, alleged that Andrew sexually assaulted her at Maxwell’s London home after a night out dancing in March 2001.

In December, Maxwell was convicted of recruiting and grooming young girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.

Giuffre also said Andrew assaulted her at Epstein’s home in New York, and on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands.

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