Sandhurst scandal: Foreign cadets and instructors expelled
THE Sovereign’s Parade concluded in traditional manner at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst yesterday, albeit in the Queen’s absence. But I can reveal that the paradeground pomp and splendour masked a deeply embarrassing chapter in Sandhurst’s history.
Only days ago, its Commandant, Major General Duncan Capps, felt obliged to expel no fewer than seven overseas cadets — all of them from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
‘The cadets’ instructors got the boot too,’ my man on parade tells me. ‘It was because of what are described as “disciplinary incidents”.’
Capps won’t have taken such decisive action lightly, not least because of the diplomatic discomfort it will cause the Foreign Office — and because of the potential cost to the Treasury. Oil-rich countries pay handsomely for their links with Sandhurst; the UAE recently built a new accommodation block there, the Zayed Building, at a cost of £15 million.
The expulsions come at a time of fraught relations with the UAE. The ruler of Dubai was ordered to pay a record £554million to his former wife and their two children by a British court last December. Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, a horse raceloving friend of the Royal Family, will have to pay for Princess Haya’s security for the rest of her life after she fled to Britain to escape him.
It followed previous High Court judgments that the sheikh orchestrated the abductions of two of his daughters and used military-grade surveillance software to launch a phone-hacking operation on British soil. He has denied the findings.
At Sandhurst, there can be cultural differences between Arab princelings and British officer cadets.
Capps did his best to sound a warning of this last year, when, in an interview for a Middle East readership, he said: ‘Regardless of background or position, officer cadets are treated the same. Monarchs are treated just like everyone else.’
Some find this hard to accept. ‘One of them in my intake wanted to be excused early morning stag [guard duty],’ a Sandhurst alumnus tells me, ‘so he went up to the company sergeant major with a bunch of £10 notes — a whole wad — in his hand.
‘The company sergeant major took his head off. Figuratively. And put him on guard at two in the morning.’
AT ONE point, the problem became so severe that the military police investigated allegations of ‘huge bribes’ — BMWs and Mercedes cars, Rolexes and foreign holidays — being offered to Sandhurst instructors.
More recently, there have, I’ve been told, been difficulties on ‘cultural days’ to London.
‘You’d go up to see a play or go to a museum — and it descended into chaos when alcohol was introduced to the equation,’ explains another Sandhurst man.
The less impressive overseas cadets were, he adds, known as ‘Floppies’ – ‘F ****** lazy overseas potential enemies’. An Army spokesman declines to comment.