Steve Scully alleges in a Netflix documentary that Andrew and a young woman - he now knows to be Virginia Giuffre - were "engaged in foreplay" in the pool on Epstein's private island in the Caribbean.

Giuffre, also known as Virginia Roberts, has in the past alleged she had sex with the Duke of York in 2001 after being trafficked to the UK by financier Epstein.

She alleges Prince Andrew had sex with her on three separate occasions, including when she was 17 - a minor under US law.

The prince categorically denies he had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Giuffre.

"Jeffrey hung out with a lot of powerful and well known figures, both politically and financially and British royalty," Scully says in the documentary series Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich.

"It was probably around 2004 I saw Prince Andrew, he was at the pool, he was with, at that time, an unknown girl to me, she was young, she didn't have any top on, they were engaged in foreplay, he was grabbing her and grinding against her.

"You tell yourself that you didn't know for sure and you never really saw anything but that's just all rationalisation," said Scully, who said he maintained Epstein's telecommunications and data equipment on Little Saint James Island in the US Virgin Islands.

"Jeffrey Epstein, he was a guy that concealed his deviance very well, but he didn't conceal it that well."

Roberts has urged Andrew to come forward and be interviewed by FBI and US prosecutors about his friendship with Epstein, a convicted sex offender who took his own life in jail while facing sex trafficking charges.

US lawyer Geoffrey Berman, who is leading the Epstein inquiry, said in March that Prince Andrew had "completely shut the door on voluntary co-operation" with the investigation.

The duke stepped down from royal duties last November following a disastrous television interview about his friendship with Epstein.

A spokeswoman for the lawyers representing the Duke of York repeated that Prince Andrew had no recollection of ever having met Virginia Roberts.

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Australian Associated Press