Britain's Prince Andrew rejected any suggestion that he participated in the alleged sex crimes which U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein was accused of, Buckingham Palace said in a statement.
Epstein committed suicide in a Manhattan jail cell earlier this month while being held on sex-trafficking charges.
"The Duke of York has been appalled by the recent reports of Jeffrey Epstein's alleged crimes," Buckingham Palace said in a statement.
"His Royal Highness deplores the exploitation of any human being and the suggestion he would condone, participate in or encourage any such behaviour is abhorrent," the Palace said.
British media including the Daily Mail published a picture which it said showed Andrew, the second son of Queen Elizabeth, waving goodbye to a woman from inside a Manhattan mansion owned by Epstein.
The reports said the prince had hosted Epstein at Balmoral, Queen Elizabeth II's home in Scotland, in 1999 at a time when the monarch may have been in residence.
He also reportedly hosted Epstein at Sandringham, another royal residence in eastern England, a year later.
The Mail said the picture had been taken in 2010 - two years after Epstein pleaded guilty to a Florida state felony prostitution charge and registered as a sex offender.
U.S. court papers have previously shown that Epstein had socialized with Andrew and other high-profile figures including U.S. President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton.
Epstein first came under investigation in 2005 after police in Palm Beach, Florida, received reports he had sexually abused underage girls in his mansion there.
By 2007, Epstein was facing a potential federal indictment for sexually abusing dozens of girls between 1999 and 2007. Epstein struck a deal, however, to plead guilty in 2008 to the Florida state felony prostitution charge, and register as a sex offender.
Virginia Giuffre — previously Virginia Roberts — one of Epstein's alleged victims, has testified that she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew in London when she was 17. She said she had sex with him again in New York and on Epstein's private island in the Caribbean.
But the allegations were struck from the record by a US judge in 2015, who said the "lurid details" were not needed to decide a civil case concerning Epstein.
