British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell has denied finding underage sexual partners for the Duke of York and claimed the royal’s accuser was telling a “tissue of lies”, according to newly released court documents.

Maxwell, the former girlfriend of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, repeatedly denied any memory of the circumstances around Virginia Giuffre’s claim Andrew slept with her when she was 17 – still a minor under US law.

The socialite is awaiting trial in the US after being charged with procuring teenage girls for Epstein to abuse. She denies the charges.

In the deposition transcript, from a since settled defamation case brought by Ms Giuffre, also known as Roberts, Maxwell accused the now mother-of-three of lying.

In the document, which had redacted the duke’s name, Maxwell was asked if she had introduced Ms Giuffre to the royal in London and replied: “I understand her story about… but again, her tissue of lies is extremely hard to pick apart, what is true and what isn’t.

“Actually I wouldn’t recollect her at all but for her tissue stories about this situation.”

Asked again if the pair had met thanks to her, she replied she had “no recollection” and when quizzed if she had introduced Andrew to any “girls under the age of 18” she stated that he had only met her friends and their children.

Ms Giuffre, who claims she was trafficked by paedophile financier Epstein, alleges the duke had sex with her on three separate occasions.

Andrew has categorically denied he has had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Ms Giuffre.

Asked about the surroundings in a picture which appears to show Andrew with his arm around Ms Giuffre, and is said to have been taken in Maxwell’s London townhouse, she replied: “They are familiar.”

But in the combative display she went on to say: “Just for the record, I have never at any time, at anyplace, in any moment ever asked Virginia Roberts or whatever she is called now to have sex with anybody.”

In the transcripts the socialite also repeatedly denied hiring anyone under the age of 18 for Epstein.

Manhattan US District judge Loretta A Preska had ordered the transcripts of seven hours of depositions by Maxwell be released.

In the documents Maxwell stated: “I never saw any inappropriate underage activities with Jeffrey ever.”

Judge Preska allowed the release of the transcripts after rejecting arguments from Maxwell’s lawyers that the defamation interviews would jeopardise a fair criminal trial for her next July.

The 2016 transcript is among more than 2,000 pages of documents that began to be released last year after an appeals court began the unsealing of documents from Ms Giuffre’s defamation case first brought in 2015.

She has alleged Maxwell recruited her at 17 to be sexually abused from 1999 to 2002.

Andrew has withdrawn from official public duties after a disastrous Newsnight interview about his relationship with Epstein, that saw him criticised for showing little sympathy with the disgraced financier’s victims.

Epstein was 66 when he killed himself in jail in Manhattan in August 2019 as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.