The Kiwi photographer caught up in the Prince Andrew, Virginia Giuffre saga
A Kiwi photographer has found himself caught up in the Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre claims.
In 2011, Michael Thomas made a copy of the now-infamous photograph of Prince Andrew posing with his arm around 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre (known as Virginia Roberts at the time).
The royal implied in his interview with the BBC - which was hailed a PR disaster - that the image could have been doctored, despite it having circulated on and off over the course of eight years.
But Thomas, from Arrowtown, appeared in the BBC's follow-up Panorama programme to deny the image was a fake.
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Thomas said his photo - a picture of an original snap - was first taken in 2011 while Thomas was in Australia on assignment for The Mail on Sunday, where he worked for 12 years.
He told the programme he met with Giuffre and was handed a collection of photos, but she didn't single out that shot.
"It wasn't like she pulled the photo of Prince Andrew out, it was just in amongst the rest of them," he said.
He described the collection of printed images as "typical teenage snaps".
The original picture of Andrew and Guiffre was believed to have been taken at Ghislaine Maxwell's house in Belgravia, London. Maxwell was the girlfriend of US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Guiffre told Panorama she was trafficked by Epstein and made to have sex with Prince Andrew. He has categorically denied this.
Thomas told Mountain Scene his copy of the photo of the pair together was "probably one of the most published pictures in the world at the moment".
"That whole thing about it being Photoshopped is just rubbish, there's no chance that it was, I don't believe there is, anyway," he said.
A photographer with over twenty years experience, Thomas had an extensive career covering sports events including the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, 1991 Rugby World Cup, and Wimbledon between 1989 and 1991, according to his website. He moved back to Queenstown in 2005.
Thomas said he was "only a small part" in the story. "It is funny to think that you're involved in something that's now so big.
"It was big at the time, in 2011, now it's just gone mad."
Speaking to the BBC last month, the Duke of York said of the image: "From the investigations that we've done, you can't prove whether or not that photograph is faked or not because it is a photograph of a photograph of a photograph.
"So it's very difficult to be able to prove it but I don't remember that photograph ever being taken.
"That's me but whether that's my hand or whether that's the position I… but I don't… I have simply no recollection of the photograph ever being taken."
Thomas believed the duke's response "muddied the waters" and was "weird".
In the BBC programme David Boies, the lawyer for the victims, questioned why the image's credibility was only being questioned now.
"They've had this photograph for years, they just figured out that they think it's a forgery? If it wasn't a real photograph, what's the first thing they would've said years ago? 'Well that's not real'."
Giuffre claimed the original image had a date stamp on its back - March 14, 2001. The image, along with several others, is now in the FBI's possession.