As we reveal Sunninghill’s lavish transformation, the ex-MP who’s a savage critic of Royal spending turns his fire on the Duke of York Finished at last... but will Andrew ever come clean about his £15m South York deal with oligarch?
NOTHING epitomises the toxicity surrounding Prince Andrew’s finances more than the controversial sale of Sunninghill Park – the sprawling 12-bedroom house near Windsor Castle that the Queen gave her second son as a wedding present.
So pungent is the whiff of scandal that there have been demands for an official inquiry into why Kazakhstani oligarch Timur Kulibayev paid £3 million over the £12 million asking price – even though the house had languished on the market for more than five years when he bought it.
Andrew, who has always denied any impropriety, has been accused of acting as a fixer in Kulibayev’s business deals and is a close friend of the tycoon’s father-in-law, Kazakhstan’s former autocratic dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev.
More puzzlingly, the property – dubbed South York because of its resemblance to JR Ewing’s vulgar mansion in 1980s soap Dallas – stood empty for more than eight years after the sale, fell into ruin and was finally razed to the ground.
Now, as The Mail on Sunday’s exclusive picture on this page reveals, an enormous new mansion is nearing completion on the site. After almost three years of building work, the property boasts six en-suite bedrooms, a sauna, ice room, steam room, gym, treatment room and games parlour.
Upstairs is a ‘children’s wing’ with two en-suite bedrooms, dressing rooms and a nanny’s quarters. Across the landing are two master bedroom suites with balconies, dressing rooms and a living room.
Outside, there will be a 200ft split-level terrace, with rose and scented gardens, along with a ‘performing arts space’.
An area has been set aside for a wendy house, trampoline and children’s garden with a 200ft-long running water feature that leads towards a tennis court. New lawns have been laid, trees planted and final touches are under way to lay a grand new driveway and fountain at the entrance.
It has been widely reported that the ultimate owner of the house is oil and gas tycoon Mr Kulibayev but latest Land Registry documents state the property is registered to a company based in Luxembourg – a tax haven. It remains unclear if Mr Kulibayev ever intends to move in.
Last year, I published a devastating critique of the Royal Family’s finances, exposing how the Windsors have exploited the system to amass enormous hidden wealth.
Now, I have updated my book, adding more material about the Duke of
The Yorks’ home looked like a branch of Tesco
York’s highly questionable activities. The mysterious sale of Sunninghill Park is just one disturbing episode and the controversy rumbles on with many serious questions yet to be answered.
The much-maligned property was built as a gift from the Queen for her son and Sarah Ferguson on their marriage in 1986.
It would not have won any architectural awards from his brother Charles, looking as it did like an off-the-shelf branch of Tesco, missing only the Toytown clock that adorns so many of their leaden outlets. Nor was the interior much of an improvement, with its musical toilet roll holders that played ‘God Save The Queen’. Following their divorce in 1996, the couple lived there with daughters Beatrice and Eugenie but Andrew eventually put it on the market for £12 million in 2002.
Andrew moved out in 2004 to live at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park. To the surprise of many, he was joined there by his ex-wife two years later, leaving Sunninghill standing empty.
In all that time there had been precious little interest in the property or its huge price tag. After all, if you had such a sum to spend on a house, why would you buy that uninspiring one?
For some time, Andrew had been hawking the house around, including on official trips abroad, such as one to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in 2004. But then in 2007, as if by some miracle, the house was bought for £ 15 million, and not by anyone approaching Savills, the estate agent charged with selling it.
Previously it was reported that the buyer was listed as an opaque company based in the tax haven that is the British Virgin Islands.
After the sale, the house remained empty for a further eight years and fell into a state of ruin before being demolished in 2016.
Not surprisingly, the private sale raised eyebrows and has been the subject of intense media scrutiny ever since. Kazakhstan is home to some of the world’s richest gas and mineral reserves but also had a reputation for corruption, though steps are slowly being taken to improve matters.
Former president Nursultan Nazarbayev and the Duke of York have known each other for some time and have even gone goose hunting together. Andrew has been keen to arrange meetings between British investors and companies in Kazakhstan. Throughout his period as Britain’s roving trade ambassador, an absolutely central figure was the president’s billionaire sonin-law, Timur Kulibayev.
He was befriended by Andrew, who also formed a bond with Goga Ashkenazi, a leading businesswoman and mother to two sons by Kulibayev. Andrew was photographed with her at Ascot, where she was invited into the Royal Box.
In 2011, Andrew reportedly lobbied Rory Tapner, chief executive at the Queen’s bank Coutts, to take on Mr Kulibayev as a client, even asking senior bank figures if they would travel to Kazakhstan to meet him.
The meeting never took place, with one bank official observing that ‘Kazakh oligarchs are the sort of people we generally don’t touch with a bargepole’.
It was rumoured that the gobetween for the Sunninghill deal was Ms Ashkenazi. In fact, it was Kenges Rakishev, a Kazakh tycoon whose financial interests cover much of the country’s natural resources and who at the time was
Why did Kazakh tycoon cover up his ownership?
engaged in the construction of a £2.5 billion petrochemical plant in Kazakhstan. Andrew had several private meetings with him in London, sometimes lasting hours.
The obvious question, to which no satisfactory answer has ever been
forthcoming, is why would Mr Kulibayev pay Prince Andrew £3 million over the asking price for a property he apparently never intended to occupy? A second question might be: why did he take such elaborate steps to cover up his ownership of the property?
Of all the Queen’s children, the Duke of York appears to be the least able to reconcile himself to the fact he has slipped down the Royal list of importance. Once second in line to the throne, he is now, since the birth of Prince Harry’s son Archie last year, number eight.
Princess Anne has a different approach. She has accepted her lot, and just quietly gets on with life.
An apparently never- ending stream of headlines about Andrew and his family, many of them negative, has ensured that he is never far from controversy.
For i nstance, i n May i t was revealed that he and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, a couple who these days never quite seem either married or divorced, faced a legal action over their multi-million ski chalet in the Swiss resort of Verbier. It was said they had failed to meet a deadline to pay the remainder of what they owed – about £6.7 million – for the purchase of the chalet.
In the past, there were always people happy to stump up cash to help the Yorks out of yet another self-dug hole, be it Jeffrey Epstein or some contact from the former Soviet Union.
Sarah had accepted money from
Epstein, though after he had been jailed she admitted it had been a ‘ gigantic error’ and vowed to repay the money. When asked in 2015 if she had done so, her spokesman replied: ‘No comment.’ It is a reasonable assumption that the word ‘comment’ was superfluous. Given the events of the past year, which have seen Andrew under fire over his friendship with the now dead convicted paedophile Epstein and facing allegations of sex with a minor under US law, the Grand Old Duke of Sleaze is perceived as so toxic – and perhaps, more significantly, lacking in influence – these fair weather friends are now hard to find.
Meanwhile, it was revealed Sarah had signed a seven-book deal and was intending to go into the film business. Given her track record with money, however, there is no guarantee such ventures would be any more successful than others she has been involved in. The root problem is that even after their divorce in 1996, Sarah wanted to continue her expensive lifestyle and flailed around looking for money from a variety of sources.
Many such schemes proved far from trouble-free. But it was one particular offer to help pay off her debts that has hung like a stone round her ex-husband’s neck. In December 2010, Andrew was photographed walking through Central Park in New York with Epstein, who had recently been in prison for a sex offence involving a minor.
It emerged that Andrew and Epstein had known each other since the 1990s. Epstein had enjoyed a weekend at Craigowan Lodge, a seven- bedroom property in the grounds of Balmoral in 1999. Not l ong previously, Andrew had attended a party held in his honour by Epstein at Donald Trump’s Mara-Lago Palm Beach club in Florida.
At the same time as the party, 16year- old Virginia Roberts was working at the club as a $9-an-hour locker room attendant.
She later filed an explosive court submission to allege that she had been recruited the year before Andrew’s party as a sex slave for Epstein and that she was used to satisfy the sexual needs of important people, including Andrew.
Her affidavit stated that she had sex with Andrew three times. She claimed that Epstein told her ‘to gi ve t he Prince whatever he required’ and to report back on the details of what occurred.
She said Epstein’s aim was to ingratiate himself with powerful people to gain influence, ‘as well as potential blackmail information’.
Andrew and Buckingham Palace have always strenuously denied any such encounter ever took place, and originally claimed the Prince had no recollection of having met her. But then a 2001 photograph of a happy-looking Andrew with his arm around Ms Roberts’s midriff was published by The Mail on Sunday.
Despite these strong denials, the Palace has never explained why Andrew was in the company of a 17-year-old with his arm round her. Nor has it provided a narrative to counter the claim that flight logs appear to place Andrew and Ms Roberts together at the times and in the locations she alleges the sex sessions took place.
Worryingly, Andrew featured in Epstein’s notorious black book of high society contacts which became public in 2015. There were 16 phone numbers for him, including a Palace one marked ex-directory, one for Balmoral and one for Sandringham, as well as a personal mobile number. There were 18 numbers for Sarah Ferguson.
Despite the denials, the story would not go away, and the embers that had been ominously smouldering burst into life again in July last year, when Epstein was re-arrested and charged
‘Prince was surrounded by topless women’
with sex-trafficking. One of the statements read out in court came from Ms Roberts. Another, in a deposition from a Johanna Sjoberg, then 21, accused Andrew of putting his hand on her breast.
Epstein’s death in prison last year, however, did not relieve the pressure on Andrew. Footage emerged of him inside Epstein’s New York apartment, while the Palace issued ever shriller denials.
That Andrew is fond of the company of attractive young women is hardly a revelation. He was photographed on holiday on a yacht surrounded by topless women in Phuket, Thailand, in 2001. He was with his friend Epstein, who is thought to have hosted Andrew’s holiday.
Epstein’s former butler, Juan Alessi, in a 2011 sworn deposition, said that Andrew attended pool parties with naked women at the mansion, where the prince allegedly enjoyed massages from adolescent girls.
At least three of the girls were questioned under oath as to whether Andrew had any sexual contact with them. They exercised their right to remain silent under the 5th Amendment to the US constitution. Andrew has denied being present at any pool parties.
He was found in attendance at a Hallowe’en sadomasochistic ‘hookers and pimps’ themed party in Manhattan in 2000 accompanied by Ghislaine Maxwell, who allegedly procured girls for Epstein, including Virginia Roberts.
A couple of days after the footage of Andrew’s presence at Epstein’s Manhattan house was released, more than 20 women assembled to testify before a judge in New York. One was Virginia Roberts, who told waiting reporters: ‘He knows the truth and I know the truth. I hope he comes clean about it.’ But Andrew
seems to have been studiously determined not to answer any legal questions.
A n d r e w’s strategy last autumn was to avoid any legal entanglement and, instead, use the media to try to dampen the story. The strategy was to backfire spectacularly.
He even suggested that the incriminating photo of him with his arm round Ms Roberts’s midriff could be a fake. Few were convinced, especially not Ms Roberts, who took to the airwaves to label him ‘an abuser’.
But the real damage was done in a BBC interview with Emily Maitlis. In it, Andrew admitted he had been a guest of Epstein on many occasions, and had been to his private island and on his private plane, but maintained he never witnessed or suspected anything untoward. He said he had no recollection of ever meeting Virginia Roberts, despite the photograph.
The fallout from the car-crash interview included renewed pressure on Scotland Yard to explain why it had not pursued c o mpl a i n t s about Prince Andrew’s alleged engagement with Ms Roberts, and specifically the allegation that she had been trafficked to Britain to have sex with Andrew at the home of Ghislaine Maxwell.
It also forced Andrew to move his office out of Buckingham Palace and to stand down from all 230 of his patronages, a decision he presented as a temporary move.
Come t he new year, and Buckingham Palace let it be known that Andrew’s 60th birthday would be a muted affair. The hitherto unremarked practice of flying the Union Jack on public buildings to mark the Duke’s birthday now generated a good deal of public hostility. A number of councils said they had no intention of complying and the Government was left with little option but to say that flying the flag was optional.
And to ward off more unwelcome headlines, Andrew quietly made it public that he had ‘declined’ a promotion to the rank of Admiral due to come up on his 60th birthday. This promotion, like the vast majority of honours handed out by the Queen to her family, naturally bore no relation to the achievement of anything that would remotely justify it.
Andrew is the Queen’s favourite son and the turn of events will have distressed her deeply.
Despite Andrew’s toxic association with Epstein, it is possible that his position would have been treated with more sympathy had his arrogance and rudeness not alienated so many people.
The truth is that Andrew has become a Royal pariah, and a return to public life any time soon is unthinkable.
© Norman Baker, 2020
…And What Do You Do?, by Norman Baker, is published in paperback by Biteback on September 8 at £9.99. Offer price £7.99 (20 per cent discount) until September 6. To pre-order, call 020 3308 9193 or go to mailshop.co.uk/books.