Prince Andrew didn’t just lose face in his “car crash” interview involving Jeffrey Epstein over the weekend — the slammed sit-down is also royally costing his charities.
Accounting powerhouse KPMG yanked its sponsorship of the embattled prince’s Pitch@Palace program, which provides mentorships to budding entrepreneurs, after Andrew’s disastrous BBC chat Saturday, in which he offered bizarre claims while denying he had sex with one of Epstein’s underage “slaves,” Sky News reported Monday.
KPMG was a founding partner of the initiative. The renewal of its sponsorship was technically due in October — amid increasing heat on Andrew over the sex allegation — and the company has now decided not to continue to participate, the report said. The accounting firm declined comment to Sky.
But Buckingham Palace acknowledged in a statement Monday, “KPMG’s contract with Pitch@Palace ended at the end of October. A full programme of Pitch@Palace events is continuing across the United Kingdom.”
The mega-pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which is also a partner in the program, told Sky that it is still on the fence about whether to continue its professional ties with the prince.
“Our three year partnership with pitch@palace is due to expire at the end of this year and is currently being reviewed,” the company said in a statement.
The Times of London said that even one of the royal family’s favorite goodwill initiatives is weighing whether to cut its ties to Prince Andrew.
Higher-ups with Outward Bound, which encourages leadership skills especially in young people, have called an emergency meeting this week to discuss its future with Andrew, its royal patron and former chairman of its board of trustees.
There “will be a discussion of the issues raised by Prince Andrew’s interview on Saturday,” a rep for the organization told the Times.
The prince’s daughter Princess Beatrice is a member of the board but won’t be taking part in the discussion because of the obvious conflict of interest, the report said.