PIZZA Express held an internal investigation into whether Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor visited their Woking branch, it has been reported
It came after the disgraced former prince claimed – in a much publicised BBC Newsnight interview – that he had visited the pizza chain the day he was alleged to have had sex with a teenage victim of Jeffrey Epstein 20 miles away in central London.
During the original Newsnight broadcast around four years ago, the duke denied he had had sex with the late Virginia Giuffre, and said he had no recollection of ever meeting her and that he had spent the day in question at Pizza Express in Woking at a party with one of his daughters.
“On that particular day that we now understand is the date which is March 10, I was at home, I was with the children and I’d taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking for a party at I suppose sort of four or five in the afternoon,” Andrew said at the time.
“And then because the duchess was away, we have a simple rule in the family that when one is away the other one is there. I was on terminal leave at the time from the Royal Navy so, therefore, I was at home.”
But sources have now told the BBC that senior management at the pizza chain opened an internal enquiry into the matter.
The broadcaster reported that Pizza Express had found neither evidence he had been to the restaurant, nor evidence to definitively say he had not.
BBC Newsnight also said its research had uncovered no evidence of anyone ever seeing Mountbatten-Windsor at the restaurant on the day in 2001 either.
This included a freedom of information request sent to the Metropolitan police asking if any royal protection officers had accompanied the former prince, as he had claimed.
The Met refused, and told the BBC: “Confirming or denying that information is held would reveal whether protection had been afforded to a specific individual other than the king and the prime minister.”
