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Jeffrey Epstein advised former Prince Andrew’s team on deal with Cantor Fitzgerald

Aides to king’s brother worked with convicted sex offender on planned agreement with US investment bank in 2013

Aides to the former Prince Andrew took detailed financial advice from the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on a lucrative proposal for the royal to be paid for introducing clients such as sovereign wealth funds to US investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald.

The advice was given in 2013 when King Charles’s younger brother — now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — was still a working member of the royal family. As a royal, he would have been entitled to receive payments from the UK taxpayer-funded sovereign grant.

The envisaged income for Mountbatten-Windsor under the agreement — which was never signed — is unclear. But Urramoor — his company, called UML in the documents — was to receive a £1mn loan as soon as he signed the deal, suggesting payments worth millions of pounds were expected annually over the deal’s initial 10-year life.

The discussions about the potential deal featured in the millions of files released by the US Department of Justice over the weekend, as a result of its investigation into Epstein, who died in his New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he had sex-trafficked underage girls.

Cantor Fitzgerald stressed on Wednesday that the deal had not gone ahead. “Cantor Fitzgerald has never had any business dealings with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor,” the company said.

The discussions recorded in the DoJ data release include some over a proposed “HL loan” — an apparent reference to Howard Lutnick, then chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald and now US commerce secretary.

In an email on August 9, 2013, Epstein warned David Stern, an aide to Mountbatten-Windsor, that Cantor Fitzgerald’s gaming operations in Las Vegas would oblige Lutnick to disclose the deal to gambling regulators. Cantor has since sold its gaming business.

“He will have to disclose to the Las Vegas commission this arrangement and you will have holy hell to pay,” Epstein wrote.

The exchanges took place nearly three years after the December 2010 meeting in New York at which Mountbatten-Windsor has insisted he broke off all contact with Epstein.

The draft contract cited the extensive contacts of Mountbatten-Windsor, who stepped down in July 2011 as an official UK trade and investment representative, as a rationale for the deal.

“UML has relationships with several organisations and individuals including asset management firms, sovereign wealth funds, institutional investors, and high-net-worth individuals or family offices that may benefit from services provided by affiliates of Cantor,” the draft contract read.

Disclosure of the previously unpublicised proposed deal is the latest of several revelations in the files about Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his title of “prince” by the king in October following controversy over his relationship with Epstein.

Previous releases of files show he sought ways to circumvent restrictions on his business activity and discussed with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate, prospects to meet girls during an official royal visit to Peru.

In early September 2013, Stern forwarded to Epstein a “term sheet” — an outline contract — that had been sent to the then-prince. Stern commented that it was “madness”, apparently because it was insufficiently generous. Epstein replied, calling the terms “crazy”.

Epstein subsequently suggested Mountbatten-Windsor’s team come up with a counter offer, including an even split for Cantor Fitzgerald and Urramoor in any referral fee. That arrangement is reflected in the draft contract.

Documents posted among the Epstein files show Mountbatten-Windsor — who was also forced to give up the lease on his 30-room Royal Lodge by the King last year — felt constrained from entering into some financial arrangements because of royal convention.

But he told Epstein in one email that there were “no problems” in his making investments via trusts.

The UK’s corporate registry, Companies House, lists Mountbatten-Windsor — under the name HRH Andrew Inverness — as holding significant control over the company via control of a trust. Urramoor was dissolved last year.

A public relations company working for Mountbatten-Windsor did not reply to a request for comment.

Buckingham Palace did not reply to questions about whether it knew about Mountbatten-Windsor’s involvement in discussions about a potential deal.

The Numbers, and Questions, Behind Musk’s Mega-Merger

The combination of SpaceX and xAI will create a rocket-and-A.I. giant. But investors and experts have concerns about the consequences of the deal.

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Andrew here. The biggest merger in history, with an asterisk, just happened: SpaceX has acquired xAI to create a $1.25 trillion giant. It’s an all-stock deal — and the stock is private (and privately valued, hence the asterisk), though SpaceX plans to go public later this year.

All this was orchestrated by one person, Elon Musk, who controls both firms. It would make SpaceX a vertically integrated company for putting data centers in space and then using them for artificial intelligence services. There are questions about whether SpaceX needs xAI and about whether it complicates the SpaceX I.P.O. story, but it certainly helps Musk’s investors in xAI (some of whom previously invested in the social media site X, which xAI acquired).

There’s also a long-term antitrust question: If data centers in space become a reality — if and Musk has a near-monopoly on them — would other A.I. model makers be able to use them? More below.

Elon Musk had a busy Monday, combining his SpaceX rocket company and his xAI artificial intelligence start-up to create the world’s most valuable private enterprise,.

Musk described the merged company as “the most ambitious, vertically integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth.” The deal transpired before a long-planned I.P.O. for SpaceX that could happen this summer.

But investors and others are raising questions about what the merger actually accomplishes, especially for SpaceX, which was already riding high and now has a more complicated story to sell to investors.

The details: The deal valued SpaceX at about $1 trillion, up from the roughly $800 billion cited in December; xAI was valued at $250 billion, slightly up from its last fund-raising round. (The move required SpaceX to issue about $250 billion of new stock, drastically diluting the stakes of existing investors.)

Musk argues that the combined company will be better able to set up space-based A.I. data centers, which in theory can transcend the limitations on power use and physical land needs of Earth-based ones. “In the long term, space-based A.I. is obviously the only way to scale,” Musk wrote in a memo to employees that SpaceX also issued publicly.

The optimist case: The combined company makes SpaceX “a lot more attractive” to investors because it eliminates distractions for Musk, Andrew Rocco, a strategist at Zacks Investment Research, told DealBook.

SpaceX, which reportedly earned about $8 billion on more than $15 billion in revenue last year, could funnel cash to the money-losing xAI, which has already raised $42 billion from investors since its founding in 2023, according to Pitchbook. (Bloomberg previously reported that xAI was burning through about $1 billion a month.)

There are concerns, too:

SpaceX, which has been seeking to raise a record $50 billion from its I.P.O., had a relatively clean story to tell: It’s the world’s biggest rocket company and satellite internet operator, and it’s very profitable. But SpaceX must now explain to prospective investors why it also has a deeply unprofitable A.I. arm (one that includes X, a social network that has frequently run afoul of government regulators.)

Making celestial data centers a reality requires solving complex problems including how to cool them (radiators to do so might need to be bigger than tennis courts) and how to shield them from cosmic radiation. A big issue is cost, with experts reckoning that the price of shipping components to space would need to fall about tenfold. Google projected that this might happen in the 2030s; Musk estimated on Monday that it might happen in two to three years.

Michael Sobel, an investor whose firm buys secondary stakes in privately held companies, told The Information that he has heard from SpaceX shareholders who have some questions about the deal. Many are open to its logic and trust Musk, he said, “but they’re like, ‘Hmmm.’”

Nvidia could invest around $30 billion, Amazon is down for at least $20 billion and Microsoft is looking at $10 billion as part of a $100 billion fundraising for OpenAI. SoftBank will bring the AI company closer to its goal with an investment worth around $30 billion.

My colleague Sri Muppidi reported all of this last week. OpenAI has built amazing products and could be a world-changing company, but these numbers don’t make sense. Tough competition, huge cash burn and an uncertain path to profitability are just some reasons.

Maybe the companies making these investments see something I don’t. Maybe their motives are purely financial, and they believe OpenAI is a bargain at this round’s $730 billion valuation. A tripling of the company’s value would put it at a modest $2 trillion.

If you’re skeptical about these numbers, there are other more concerning reasons why the world’s richest companies and one of its biggest investors are writing big checks.

One is that OpenAI is facing growing skepticism from the markets about its cash burn and future profitability. OpenAI has effectively funded its data center buildout by leveraging the balance sheets of its partners, including Oracle, CoreWeave and Vantage Data Centers. That strategy may no longer work, or it may get very expensive.

Investors have signaled that there’s a limit to how much they’ll lend to companies relying on OpenAI to pay its bills in the future (more on Oracle’s big fundraising this week below). They’ve driven up yields on those companies’ bonds and driven down their share prices.

That’s in contrast to the way investors view the tech giants. Despite big boosts in capital expenditures and a wave of borrowing, investors have been generally enthusiastic about big tech’s bet on AI. The caution has instead come from the big companies, including Meta Platforms, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft. They have funded most of the AI buildout from their cash reserves and kept their borrowing modest. Even if they did try to borrow more, they would likely run up against limits investors have on their exposure to a single company.

The tech giants’ investments in OpenAI solve all of these problems. They offer OpenAI the cash it needs to give confidence to its supplier’s lenders. At the same time, they’re not counting the money as capital expenditures, nor are they funding it with debt, at least not so far.

This week, Oracle also nodded to the growing anxiety among investors when it announced a $25 billion bond offering. Before it sold the debt, the company announced it would fund half of its capital needs this year by selling equity. It also told investors it was serious about maintaining its investment-grade credit rating. “The fact they’re willing to take dilution was definitely a surprise to the market,” said Mike Talaga, global head of credit research at investment company Janus Henderson Investors, which invested in the offering. Oracle’s bonds have been trading at junk levels, but that commitment excited investors, who put in $125 billion in orders for the $25 billion in bonds.

There’s another possible explanation for these investments. For some companies, it’s a variation of what Nvidia did all of last year: creating circular financing deals that send money to its own customers. Those deals similarly created anxiety among investors.

Circular investments mean different things to different companies. For Nvidia, investing in a company that then buys Nvidia’s chips is a way to fend off competition and lock in growth. For Microsoft and Amazon, it means getting more cloud business from OpenAI. Microsoft has more at stake because it owns 27% of OpenAI’s public benefit corporation and OpenAI has agreed to purchase $250 billion of services from Microsoft’s Azure cloud business. And Amazon last fall signed a $38 billion cloud deal with OpenAI.

Whatever the motivation is for the tech giants’ big investments in OpenAI, the impact is the same: Cash-rich companies are giving OpenAI some financial breathing room until its revenue and profits make it sustainable or at least bring it close enough that the market will open the funding spigots.

The question is how long that will take, and whether the tech giants will continue writing checks until that happens. Microsoft shares are down nearly 14% since it reported earnings. Investors have grown more worried about the company’s dependence on OpenAI as a customer and whether it is getting a return on its AI spending. Oracle’s bond investors may have been happy with its bond offering, but owners of Oracle stock were not. That’s one of the reasons the company’s shares are down 9% this week.

The AI funding dance was also on display in Elon Musk’s shotgun wedding between SpaceX, which generated roughly $8 billion in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2025, and xAI, which burned $9.5 billion in the first nine months of last year.

Combining the companies will hide some of xAI’s weaknesses from investors. Musk’s problem is that the two businesses are very capital intensive, so he has less wiggle room than the tech giants backing OpenAI.

Bankers are very good at finding ways to keep the cash flowing. AI may be the greatest test of those skills.

Chinese leader had talked earlier with Putin about rising tensions surrounding the Middle Eastern country

WASHINGTON—President Trump said he spoke Wednesday with Xi Jinping about the “situation in Iran,” hours after the Chinese leader held a call with Moscow on those same escalating tensions.

The sequence of the calls underscored the divide among the world’s major powers over the Middle East. In a social-media post, Trump highlighted the trade aspects of his conversation with Xi that included China’s purchases—by the country that is the largest buyer of Iranian oil—of U.S. oil and gas.

During Xi’s videoconference with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier Wednesday, the two leaders appeared to be hardening in a united front. According to Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov, Xi and Putin “checked their approaches,” aligning their positions on global flashpoints, including over Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

For both Beijing and Moscow, Iran represents a critical linchpin in the Middle East that they are increasingly unwilling to see destabilized. “Beijing and Moscow’s concern over Washington’s potential military strike against Iran is at a new level,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Washington-based Stimson Center.

The Trump-Xi call comes amid renewed U.S. threats against Tehran, as the Trump administration seeks to balance military escalation with a push for diplomacy. While Trump has deployed a naval task force including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to the region and threatened strikes following an Iranian crackdown on protesters, he is also pressing for a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

Critical talks over Iran, originally slated to take place in Turkey with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, hit a snag Tuesday when Iran demanded a venue change to Oman and a U.S.-only audience. While regional officials agreed to a Friday meeting in Oman, debates continue over the scope of the agenda and whether officials from other interested countries would join them.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted Wednesday that Iran’s shifting terms risk delays and expressed skepticism about the likelihood of a breakthrough. Still, Rubio said the U.S. remained open to dialogue.

“I’m not sure you can reach a deal with these guys, but we’re going to try to find out,” Rubio told reporters.

Despite Iran tensions, Trump sounded optimistic after his call with Xi. “The relationship with China, and my personal relationship with President Xi, is an extremely good one,” Trump wrote in his social-media post. He said both leaders know the importance of keeping that bond, despite Trump’s previous threat to slap a 25% tariff on any country that continues to trade with Iran.

The White House didn’t comment beyond Trump’s post.

The leaders are expected to meet in person in China in April, with Xi invited to the U.S. for a state visit later this year.

While Trump portrayed the call as an “excellent” discussion, Xi offered a more measured tone. According to the Chinese account issued by the official Xinhua News Agency, Xi told Trump that “the U.S. has its concerns, and China has its concerns,” and said a solution could be found if both sides approached each other with “reciprocity.”

Xi said that “China is true in word and resolute in deed,” in an apparent signal that any Chinese concessions on Iran would be contingent on Washington meeting Beijing’s demands to protect its own interests.

“Xi’s overall posture with Trump, and particularly on Iran, is one of risk management,” said Daniel Russel, a former senior State Department official now with the Asia Society Policy Institute. “He is interested in protecting China’s equities, not protecting Iran.” Russel noted that “Xi has competing equities here: he wants stability and de-escalation to keep the flow and the price of oil steady and prevent disruption of shipping lanes China depends on.”

At the same time, Russel added, watching the U.S. military become stretched across the Caribbean and the Middle East “suits China’s interests just fine.”

Beijing has so far been reluctant to stand more firmly behind Iran, mirroring its caution to offer significant support for Venezuela before the U.S. raid to seize President Nicolás Maduro.

Xi and Trump last met face-to-face in October on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea and reached an agreement that included a reduction in stiff U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods in exchange for a pledge by China to crack down on the trade in the chemicals used to produce fentanyl.

They followed that up with a phone call in November initiated by Xi, which focused on Taiwan, as Japan adopted a more assertive stance on the island’s autonomy.

During Wednesday’s call with Trump, Xi reaffirmed that Taiwan remains the “most important” issue in the bilateral relationship, according to the Chinese account. He also urged caution on U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the democratic, self-governing island China claims as part of its territory.

Les budgets de défense cumulés des deux pays dépassent pour la première fois les 60 milliards d’euros, alors que le statu quo demeure précaire sur la question de la souveraineté du Sahara occidental.

Plus de 40 milliards d’euros pour l’Algérie, près de 20 milliards d’euros pour le Maroc. Les frères ennemis du Maghreb ont, en 2026, les budgets de défense les plus élevés d’Afrique – autorisations d’engagement et crédits de paiement compris. Ils sont aussi, et de loin, les premiers importateurs d’armement du continent. Tous deux représentaient 87 % des achats militaires en Afrique du Nord entre 2020 et 2024, selon l’Institut international de recherche sur la paix de Stockholm (Sipri), dans un rapport d’avril 2025.

Cette frénésie n’est pas retombée. Ces douze derniers mois, les annonces d’acquisition, officielles ou officieuses, de nouveaux équipements ou de nouvelles armes d’attaque ou de défense se sont multipliées de part et d’autre. Livraison de chasseurs furtifs Su-35 et Su-57, acquisition de missiles Iskander-M et modernisation de radars avancés S-350 et S-400, tous de fabrication russe, pour l’Algérie.

Déploiement de lance-roquettes multiples américains M142 Himars, réception de drones turcs Bayraktar Akinci et d’hélicoptères américains AH-64 Apache pour le Maroc. « Bien qu’aucun des deux pays ne souhaite la guerre, ils semblent se préparer au pire », alertait, en novembre 2025, Intissar Fakir, chercheuse au Middle East Institute de Washington.

« Il y a indéniablement une course aux armements entre l’Algérie et le Maroc. Leurs dépenses militaires ont augmenté de concert, parallèlement à l’escalade des tensions bilatérales ces cinq dernières années », constate Anthony Dworkin, chercheur au Conseil européen pour les relations internationales. Minés par le conflit sur la souveraineté du Sahara occidental, les rapports sont au point mort. Les deux voisins n’ont plus de relations diplomatiques depuis 2021 – leurs frontières communes sont fermées depuis 1994.

« Une provocation »

Nourrie par deux visions opposées du monde, l’animosité entre Alger et Rabat se reflète dans le choix de leurs fournisseurs d’armement. D’un côté, l’Algérie, dont le discours officiel se réclame des idéaux révolutionnaires et de la solidarité avec le Sud global, achète surtout à la Russie et à la Chine. De l’autre, le Maroc, pro-occidental et allié majeur non membre de l’Organisation du traité de l’Atlantique Nord, s’approvisionne principalement auprès des Etats-Unis et de la France, tous trois participant à la plateforme d’interopérabilité de l’Alliance atlantique.

La reprise des relations diplomatiques officielles entre le Maroc et Israël, en 2020, a cependant marqué un tournant. L’Etat hébreu est devenu le troisième fournisseur d’armes du royaume. « Les Etats-Unis demeurent le partenaire structurant de la politique de défense marocaine, mais la coopération industrielle avec Israël a joué un rôle d’accélérateur capacitaire », détaille Adnane Kaab, ancien colonel de l’armée de l’air marocaine, aujourd’hui consultant en sécurité.

Les derniers développements de cette alliance militaire comprennent le déploiement par le Maroc du coûteux système de défense aérienne Barak MX, d’Israel Aerospace Industries, et l’achat de satellites Ofek-13, également conçus par l’entreprise publique israélienne. A quoi s’ajoutent l’acquisition d’obusiers Atmos 2000, d’Elbit Systems, ainsi que l’ouverture annoncée, à Benslimane, dans la banlieue de Casablanca, d’une usine de production de drones « kamikazes » SpyX, de BlueBird Aero Systems.

Dans un contexte de rivalité croissante, ces annonces constituent une « menace supplémentaire pour l’Algérie », remarque M. Dworkin. « Le fait que le Maroc collabore avec Israël est perçu comme une provocation, pour des raisons à la fois idéologiques et militaires, explique le chercheur. Il est indéniable que la technologie israélienne a contribué à la sophistication des forces armées marocaines, et cela pourrait leur conférer un avantage significatif. »

La mise à niveau de l’armée marocaine ne marque pas, toutefois, un basculement du rapport de force avec sa rivale algérienne. Celle-ci dispose d’un budget deux fois plus important et est en bonne position dans les classements de référence. Le Military Balance, de l’Institut international des études stratégiques, un think tank londonien, la place au 20e rang mondial en matière de dépenses, devant l’Espagne et la Turquie.

En part de produit intérieur brut consacrée à son armée, l’Algérie occupait même, en 2024, la troisième place derrière l’Ukraine et Israël, selon le Sipri. Aux critiques qualifiant son armement de « soviétique » – sous-entendu datant de la guerre froide –, le journaliste Akram Kharief, fondateur du site spécialisé Menadefense, rétorque que « l’Algérie mène depuis vingt ans un programme de mise à jour de ses capacités militaires. L’objectif initial était de doper ses armements russes avec des technologies occidentales, mais il s’agit aujourd’hui de se conformer aux normes les plus modernes, des missiles hypersoniques en passant aux avions de cinquième génération ».

Crainte des Espagnols

Compte tenu du statu quo précaire entre les deux pays, la montée en gamme militaire du Maroc est observée avec appréhension par les diplomates européens. Si Paris s’est félicité de la normalisation des relations avec Israël, les bénéfices militaires qu’en retire Rabat nourrissent de franches inquiétudes. C’est un « facteur aggravant » dans une situation « déjà pourrie » entre l’Algérie et le Maroc, selon les mots d’un diplomate français, en 2022.

Le risque d’une escalade involontaire est pris au sérieux. La retenue mutuelle, encouragée par les Américains et les Européens, avait prévalu après la mort, en novembre 2021, de trois camionneurs algériens, tués au Sahara occidental lors d’une frappe aérienne qu’Alger avait imputée à l’armée marocaine. Mais rien ne dit qu’une riposte n’aura pas lieu au prochain incident, d’un côté ou de l’autre.

Couplées au développement de son armée, les ambitions régionales du Maroc suscitent à présent la crainte des Espagnols, qui s’interrogent sur l’avenir des présides de Ceuta et Melilla. Selon le dernier baromètre de l’Institut royal Elcano de Madrid, publié en juillet 2025, ils sont 55 % à considérer le royaume comme étant la principale menace pour leur pays, devant la Russie. Rabat n’a pourtant pas exprimé, officiellement, le souhait de voir ces enclaves, au nord du pays, réintégrer le territoire marocain.

L’augmentation des dépenses militaires du Maroc s’inscrit néanmoins dans une « politique étrangère plus ambitieuse », relève M. Dworkin. Le duel algéro-marocain déborde au Sahel, où l’influence d’Alger décline, mais où Rabat peaufine ses relations. C’est d’ailleurs dans la capitale marocaine, en août 2021, que Yaïr Lapid, alors ministre des affaires étrangères israélien, avait accusé l’Algérie d’ingérence dans la région, ce qui avait pesé dans la décision algérienne de suspendre les relations diplomatiques avec le Maroc.

Quant au Sahara occidental, le royaume a engrangé de précieux points auprès des capitales occidentales. Non seulement Washington, Madrid et Paris ont rallié ses thèses, mais le Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies a reconnu, le 31 octobre 2025, le plan d’autonomie de Rabat comme la référence principale d’une recherche de solution au conflit.

Cette victoire diplomatique ne présage pas d’un règlement définitif du contentieux frontalier, mais Donald Trump y voit l’occasion de mettre fin à une guerre, vieille d’un demi-siècle, qui empoisonne la géopolitique du Maghreb – lui-même avait reconnu la « marocanité » du Sahara occidental lors de son premier mandat. L’administration américaine va désormais plus loin. Steve Witkoff, l’émissaire de la Maison Blanche au Moyen-Orient, évoquait, le 24 octobre 2025, un « accord de paix entre l’Algérie et le Maroc dans les soixante jours ». Plus de trois mois plus tard, le « deal » se fait attendre, et la course aux armements se poursuit.

Alexandre Aublanc