Jeffrey Epstein, Howard Lutnick, and the disgraced former prince

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0:53Back in February, the BBC's Andy Verity was at his desk combing through millions of newly released documents. When the Epstein files came out, I, like others, was tasked with going through these files and I spotted something rather familiar when I searched for Lutnik. Andy was looking for any files that referenced the US Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick. When I searched for Lutnick, more than 250 documents come up. He's in the files more than 250 times. And going through all of those, I came across one, which was a record of an interview that was given to the FBI. And I looked at the allegations and they sounded strangely familiar.

1:37I've been hearing them for years. He spotted the name of one of his sources. I realised that actually what I'd been hearing from the whistleblower had real substance to it. Then we found out something more involving not just Lutnick, not just Epstein, but also our very own Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. In an exclusive BBC investigation, a whistleblower gives his first interview, revealing how he unearthed evidence suggesting that Howard Lutnick failed to disclose a business relationship with dead paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redmond in London. And today on The Global Story, Howard Lutnick, Jeffrey Epstein and the disgraced former prince.

2:36Andy Verity, Financial Investigations correspondent with the BBC. Great to have you back on the show. Good to be here. How did you hear about this story? Well, it's one of those stories where you've been thinking of doing it for years and years, but it's not quite there. So a man named Simon Andrews, who's at the centre of our story, he's a British whistleblower.

2:59We've just walked down a narrow path over a dune to be confronted by a spectacular sight here in Morgan Porth on the north coast of Cornwall, the Atlantic. So, why did you come to Cornwall, Sam? Andy, well, this is a place my wife and I always used to come down to. He now lives in Cornwall. In south-west England. In south-west England. I'm a big ocean swimmer. Yeah, I do a lot of ocean swimming. It's been great for the mental health. Where he's recuperating because of a traumatic ten years trying to expose malpractice and misconduct at his former employer. I would have flashbacks to incidents that had happened in the past.

3:44They're called dissociative seizures, where I was developing like a head movement, like your head shaking. And what have the doctors told you about what's caused that? That's due to the intense ordeal I've been through. I would say the retaliation that I've endured for 10 years. Retaliation for what? For my whistleblowing. I've been talking to him for five years. He was introduced to me by a colleague in 2021 and told me things he knew about Howard Lutnick and Jeffrey Epstein and the Royals. And of course I was interested, but I also didn't feel it was quite there in terms of the levels of proof we needed in order to show any links.

4:26But this year with the Epstein files, all that changed. So I went back to him. I said, did you know you're in the Epstein files? It turns out that an interview he gave to the FBI in 2020 and 21, where he was making some of these allegations, was also in the Epstein files. And his name had been unredacted. So he was there against his wishes. So I thought, well, if his name's out there anyway now, no point staying anonymous and convinced him to give us an interview. So you went to meet this whistleblower, Simon Andridge. What can you tell us about him? Well, he's 57 years old. He grew up in a working class house with not much money.

5:03But then in the late 80s, he started going to the City of London, the financial district. And he did well. He rose in his career. He had a very successful, lucrative career where he was first at the Japanese bank Nomura and then went on to BGC Partners, which is owned or was owned by President Trump's Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick. But he found himself when he moved from the bank to this firm of brokers, owned and controlled by Howard Lutnick, in a very different working atmosphere. He described to me how when someone did their first trade, arranged their first trade, the brokers would bang their phones.

5:44They would bang their phones until they ran around the trading floor and then they'd be doused with water. And it's a very macho atmosphere as well on this trading floor, according to him. He also starts to hear about what he calls false accounting. The firm would deny it. Money is charged to his desk's broken commission pool, the pool of money that goes towards their bonuses and their pay, which he thinks is improperly charged. He starts to try to raise this internally, concerned about false accounting, not least because he has the responsibility to sign off the accounts. And then he doesn't get a satisfactory response.

6:19At the same time, he's under huge pressure. I have a chest pain. My arm goes numb. And then I'm like in a panic. I have to walk to the Gold Street Hospital down in Wall Street. It's about a five minutes walk. And I collapse on the pavement. I get brought into the ER, the A &E. He has a heart attack. The cardiologist suddenly, there's a blood clot, and it's like emergency stations taken into an operating theatre. They're shaving me. Suddenly, they're taking the blood clot out of my heart. And he subsequently, his condition deteriorates, and in spite of that, he says he was put under pressure when he was in hospital, for example, to attend a video conference when he was in no state to because he was in the middle of an emergency, and a dispute broke out.

7:10I'm in the A &E. He's sending me messages for not turning up to a video conference which had been scheduled while I was in the emergency. The firm says he didn't carry out his responsibilities. He says it was whistleblower retaliation and they sacked him in January 2017. So since then, he's been in dispute with them and looking for any further information he can find. BGC, as I say, deniers and allegations, but that put him on a collision course with them. They say his allegations are categorically false and that they've been investigated by authorities and in their view, they lack credibility.

7:46OK, so at this point in our story, Simon has left the company. Howard Lutnick, who runs the whole operation at this point, is moving towards a career in politics. Who is he and what's he up to at this point? Howard Lutnick came from a working class New York background and joined a firm called Cantor Fitzgerald way back in the late 80s, one of the best known Wall Street firms. And in the late 90s, he took control of it. And in 2004, he founded BGC Partners. But what he's best known for, Howard Lutnick, is September the 11th, 2001, because Cantor Fitzgerald occupied a couple of floors right at the top of one of the Twin Towers.

8:27and, of course, at 8.46am on September 11th, a plane crashed in. As it happened, Howard Lutnick was not at the tower at that time because he'd been dropping off his son at kindergarten. In New York, though, he's fated by President Trump and others as a 9-11 hero. He rebuilt the firm in spite of losing his brother and his best friend. And that's, in a way, the first thing you know about Howard Lutnick. Before the Epstein files are actually released, how much do we know about the alleged links between Mr. Lutnick and Mr. Epstein? What we did know is that they both knew Trump. So Epstein knew Trump and Lutnick knew Trump.

9:06They were both in New York. They were in that scene of wealthy people and billionaires who knew each other at celebrity events, etc., etc. And then after Trump's first term, when he started to think about running again and when he succeeded in getting into office, as Howard Lutnick took charge of his transition team. Trump then promotes him to become his trade secretary. So for most people around the world, they'll know him as the man who imposed tariffs on the rest of the world. Jeffrey Epstein and Howard Lutnick, correct me if I'm wrong, are actually neighbours at one point. Is that right? That's right.

9:40Anybody could look it up and discover that actually Howard Lutnick lived at one house and they shared a wall. And he's admitted this publicly to the New York Post in a Pod Force One podcast in October 2025. Now, his story in October 2025 was that he'd gone around once. He'd only ever seen Jeffrey Epstein once in 2005. And he'd had a little tour of the house with his wife. He says that he was shown a massage table and that Jeffrey Epstein made an inappropriate comment. I say to him, massage table in the middle of your house? how often you have a massage and he says every day and then he like gets like weirdly close to me and he says and the right kind of massage and howard lutnick's initial account is that he then looked at his wife and they said we're leaving pretty soon and in the six or eight steps it takes to get from his house to my house my wife and i decided that i will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.

10:51None of us knew that until very recently, though. All you saw on the public record before he gave that interview was the fact that they had been neighbours in New York and they both knew Trump. Okay. So that happens in 2005. It's said that they then cut off contact. But then in February of this year, there's this bombshell with the release of the Epstein files. Now, I remember Howard Lutnick's name coming up in them at the time. Appearing in the files is not an implication of any wrongdoing. But can you remind us what the files actually said about those links with Epstein? Well, what emerged in the files was evidence that appeared to contradict the accounts he'd given in public to the New York Post.

11:41What we learned in February then was that there was evidence that he'd been to Jeffrey Epstein's island just around Christmas 2012. A photo emerged showing Howard Lutnick looking very summery on the island with Jeffrey Epstein and his son. Now, that photo was actually taken down initially, withdrawn from release. But internet sleuths had spotted it and screenshotted it and circulated it on social media. and so it had to be re-released. Did you in fact make the visit to Jeffrey Epstein's private island? I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation. So just after that photo emerged in the Epstein files, Howard Lutnick appeared at a committee hearing where he was asked about his links to Epstein.

12:34He confirmed he'd visited the island with his family. I met Jeffrey Epstein when I moved to a house next door to him in New York. And I met him then. Over the next 14 years, I met him two other times that I can recall. Two times. But apart from that meeting at the House in 2005 when they were neighbours and the two visits after that, Lutton was saying after that point he had very little to do with Epstein. Over a 14-year period, I did not have any relationship with him. I barely had anything to do with that person. And this is where my whistleblower, Simon, discovers that wasn't the end of the story.

13:25OK, so February 2026, the massive trove of Epstein files have been released. How do you realise that you have a new lead on the story at this point? Well, it was all a race because all the media outlets were trying to find things out. And I'm an investigations correspondent. And so, of course, I spent inordinate amounts of time searching the US Department of Justice's Epstein Library, which now had millions of documents on it. And then I saw my whistleblower's name, Andres, and I knew he'd spoken to the FBI. This was clearly a record of the time that he did. In fact, he had two times when he spoke to them, or maybe three in 2020 and 2021.

14:05And these showed him making allegations about Howard Lutnick and his closeness to Epstein and the royals. OK, so you find Simon Andrews' name in the Epstein files. You reach out to him. What happened next? I said, you'll never guess what. You're in the Epstein files. Yeah, you were the first person to tell me that I was in the Epstein files, which I was completely, you know, I was just completely shocked about. He was like stunned and took a while to take it in and then started delving through the Epstein files himself. Everyone was searching Lutnick. Howard Lutnick had a particular email which was HWL.

14:44He knew because he'd worked there that senior people at BGC used their initials on their emails. So he searched under HWL Howard William Lutnick and found material that no one else had found and sent it to Congress and that's what changed the game for him. What did he find? So there's several dimensions. One is that we already knew that there was evidence that what he'd said about not seeing Jeffrey Epstein after 2005, not being in the room with him, was at the very least misleading because we saw the pictures of him on Jeffrey Epstein's island in 2012. That came out in February. But then emails emerged, spotted by our whistleblower, that showed that actually there was a message to Jeff from Howard setting up the meeting.

15:37And then subsequently it emerged that on the 28th of December 2012, an agreement with that date on it was drawn up for a company, an advertising technology company called Adfin. And investors in that company signed on the document were both Jeffrey Epstein and Howard Lutnick. Okay, so just to be absolutely clear, Howard Lutnick says that he cuts off contact with Jeffrey Epstein in 2005. Subsequently, there is evidence that they are still in contact. How has he addressed and explained the fact that they are still in contact? It would appear whether or not they're having lunch on an island in the Caribbean or they're exchanging emails about a company called Adfin.

16:24How does he justify all that? Well, he's asked in Congress in May when he knew that Jeffrey Epstein was also an investor in this Adfin company. He said not until this year, 2026. But this other email under HWL, which Simon Andrews discovered, shows he's discussing Adfin directly with Epstein in May 2018, which would appear to contradict its account. Here's the exact quotes in May 2018. Epstein asks, on another note, what do you think the prospects for Adfin are? Now, if Howard Lutnick had been unaware that Jeffrey Epstein was an investor in this company, which he had also invested in, then wouldn't he have said, oh, Jeffrey, I didn't know you were also an investor in Adfin.

17:18But he doesn't say anything like that in this email exchange. He answers, producing revenue finally. This is their year. Next 12 months, they need to become economically self-sufficient. You see elsewhere in the files, the chief executive of Adfin seeking meetings with both Lutnick and Epstein. Altogether, this evidence is one of the reasons why Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have accused Lutnick of lying and have been calling for his resignation. We should make it clear that Howard Lutnick has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and he told the House Oversight and Reform Committee, quotes, I unequivocally condemn the conduct attributed to Jeffrey Epstein and everyone who participated in his illegal activities.

18:00The survivors of his crimes deserve our respect and support. The White House, speaking on behalf of Lutnick, said, quotes, the BBC's pathetic and desperate attempt to slander Secretary Lutnick will do nothing to change the fact that he has been the most consequential commerce secretary in modern history. But if their names were both on the same document to do with an investment in this company, Adfin, does that mean that they were together in the same place signing this document? Not necessarily. But what you do know then is that they were discussing Adfin in 2018, eight years before, as Lutnick claimed to Congress, he knew that Epstein was an investor.

18:4110 years after Epstein was convicted of sex offences, and let's see, 13 years after, according to Lutnick's account, he resolved with his wife never to be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.

19:11big story at the intersection of where the world and America meet. And you can now watch the global story on the iHeart app. Catch every brand new episode every weekday. Just tap into iHeart to start watching. And we hope you enjoy the show.

19:34After unearthing the emails about this business relationship, Andy's whistleblower Simon Andridge continued to dig through the Epstein files. He started sending stuff to me, which kept on making my jaw hit the floor. He found a story that links Howard Lutnick and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in a proposed business deal that in the background, Jeffrey Epstein was advising Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's advisors all about.

20:09Let me tell you more. Howard Lutnick was approached by a lawyer in London who had an idea for how Howard Lutnick might lend Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor£1 million. And in exchange, they would enter a joint venture whereby Andrew would bring his contacts. So rich individuals, sovereign institutions, sovereign wealth funds, all those people he'd met on his travels in his previous role as trade envoy and in his role as a royal as well. So he knew lots of people. We know he knew, for example, oligarchs in Kazakhstan. We know he knew lots of people in Eurasia. He knew people in Africa, wealthy individuals.

20:51You get to meet lots of rich, powerful people when you're on tour as a British royal. The deal was that, in Simon Andrews' words, they would buy a prince for a million pounds. There was a document setting out terms of the deal. And the idea was Andrew would bring clients with pots of money and then they put them into investment management and split the fees 50-50. But there was a little kink in the deal, which was that Andrew wouldn't be able to do business with anybody else. He'd have to bring all the business to Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick's firm. So, a man who's described by Andrew as his business brain, his name's David Stern, he describes Jeffrey Epstein as his mentor.

21:36He decided to ask Jeffrey Epstein about this deal that was being offered to Andrew that would bind him into exclusivity. Jeffrey Epstein says no exclusivity. The documents show that they held talks for three months about this deal, but the documents peter out in late 2013, early 2014. According to Cantor Fitzgerald, they never went into business with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, but they don't deny that they did talk about it for three months. So it's a matter for speculation as to why it stopped. But we did email Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, inviting him to comment on the allegations, but we haven't heard back from him.

22:14Help us understand, Andy, why do you think this Andrew detail is so important? Well, because of what it says about Howard Lutnick wanting to do the deal with Andrew, lending him a million pounds suggests why did Andrew need a million pounds at that point. and it also sheds light on the continued contact, even if it was only indirect, between Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Epstein long after Andrew said he last saw him. He was still in touch with him indirectly through Andrew's business advisor, David Stern, who described Epstein as his mentor. And we see Epstein advising on a deal that Andrew's going to do with Howard Lutnick, now the US Commerce Secretary, to essentially buy a prince, in our whistleblower's words, for a million pounds and in exchange exploit Andrew's contacts.

23:11So there are questions there which touch on issues about mixing up your public role and your desire to make money privately. And the links between Andrew and Epstein persisting a couple of years after Andrew said he'd cut off all contact. Yeah, so the last date he said that he'd seen Epstein was December 2010 and said he'd cut off all contact. We already knew, 2011, some contact then. Now we see, 2013, that Epstein is advising Andrew on a business deal. What about Lutnik? Why would it matter if he misrepresented his relationship with Epstein? It matters because he's supposed to tell the truth in public and to Congress.

23:55And it may sound old-fashioned, but presidential administrations are supposed to be honest with Congress and with the wider public. so that matters it matters because it sheds light on the circles of wealth and power that surrounded Jeffrey Epstein it sheds light on what happens to whistleblowers when they go up against a powerful wealthy company whether they're believed and whether they can find justice and it also matters because of what it shows about the public debate about whether people were too close to Jeffrey Epstein and who those people were and what about Simon Andrish, the whistleblower, how's this all affected him?

24:36I mean, when you tell this story, it's difficult not to think of the contentious circumstances in which he left his employer, BGC, and how that all must weigh on him now. It's had a devastating effect. He's lost his career. He's lost his health. I had a mental health crisis. The trauma was so bad. dysregulation, activation, flashback. It was out of control. He's had repeated heart episodes and he says they've retaliated against him as recently as 2024. They would deny that, of course, and BGC would say this is an unreliable, inherently unreliable source who's got an axe to grind. BGC says it terminated Simon's employment after he refused to follow medical advice, declined to perform essential job duties, rejected reasonable accommodations, and ultimately abandoned his role.

25:27That's what they say. But the truth is that anybody who's been in employment litigation has an axe to grind, both employee and employer. They both have narratives that they would prefer and would like the evidence to support their narrative. He got a whistleblower award in the United States. Action was taken. Fines were levied against BGC. And he was officially recognised as a whistleblower because they have strong laws that recognise people should be incentivised to blow the whistle on wrongdoing. I went into a trauma crisis centre for two months and did a huge amount of work on myself and was able to get myself into trauma recovery.

26:14he's lost his career on wall street and he's struggling with debts from legal costs of this ongoing struggle he's had and his physical and mental health has taken a real toll which he's had to do lots of work going to trauma recovery centers etc to try to get better he now feels he is but whether or not this story tells you a good thing about trying to blow the whistle you'll have to decide when you listen to it.

26:47Thank you so much, Andy Verity, for sharing it all with us. You're welcome.

27:00That was Andy Verity, the BBC's Financial Investigations correspondent. And you can hear more of Andy's investigation on File on 4 Investigates. Just search for it wherever you listen. And that's it from us for today. Our email, as always, theglobalstory at bbc.com. Please get in touch. We love hearing from you. Today's episode was produced by Sam Chandrasak and Zandra Ellen. It was edited by James Shield. Our digital producer is Tom Bage. Our studio managers are Rowan Madison and Phil Bull. Our senior news editor is Chyna Collins, and I'm Tristan Redman. We'll be back again tomorrow. See you then.