Libyan gun smuggler was at Royal wedding
He once boasted of his influence over Andrew And fixed secret meeting between Duke and Gaddafi
A CONVICTED Libyan gun smuggler who once boasted of his influence over the Duke of York was a guest at the Royal wedding, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Tarek Kaituni, 54, helped to broker secret meetings for the Duke with the late dictator Colonel Gaddafi. He also told undercover reporters he played a key role in the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
And demonstrating his willingness to trade on their friendship, he claimed he could ‘influence’ Andrew into backing commercial projects.
Kaituni’s presence at Friday’s wedding will raise further questions about the Duke’s judgment. The company he keeps has often been a source of embarrassment to the Royals.
Kaituni is understood to have joined the 800 guests at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, for the wedding of Andrew’s daughter Princess Eugenie to Jack Brooksbank. Later he was a guest at the exclusive blacktie reception for the couple’s closest friends and family at the Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park.
The Libyan once gave Eugenie’s sister Beatrice an £18,000 diamond necklace months before the Duke allegedly lobbied a British company on his behalf.
Yesterday, confronted by a Mail on Sunday reporter on the terrace of his five-star hotel in nearby Ascot, he denied being Kaituni before suddenly changing his mind and confirming he was a guest at the wedding. ‘It was a nice wedding,’ he added.
Andrew first became involved with Kaituni, who now has US citizenship, in 2005. The same year their friendship was questioned when Kaituni was convicted of smuggling a sub-machinegun into France. His former wife Lisa van Goinga, a model, said she believed he intended to kill her after their relationship ended.
Kaituni introduced Andrew to Sakher El Materi, the ‘notoriously corrupt’ son-in-law of deposed Tunisian president Zine Ben Ali. He accompanied the Duke to a meeting with Gaddafi at Materi’s Tunisian home in August 2008.
Three months later they flew to Tripoli for another meeting with the ruthless Libyan leader, who before his death in 2011 faced an international arrest warrant for crimes against humanity.
All of Andrew’s known meetings with Gaddafi were private and none was arranged by UK Trade and Investment, for whom he worked as a trade envoy.
Although the British ambassador to Tripoli was aware of the meeting and spoke to Andrew afterwards, the Duke’s discussions with the dictator were private and not part of his role as trade envoy, according to the Foreign Office.
Andrew is known to have met Gaddafi once more, in February 2009, also in private. He met Materi again in 2009, hosting a business lunch for the Tunisian at Buckingham Palace. Materi gave Andrew a ‘statue of silver olive tree’ and a carpet with a picture of a horse on it.
Materi fled to the Seychelles in 2011 after the uprising that toppled his father-in-law. Months later, a court in Tunisia convicted him of corruption in absentia.
Throughout this time, Andrew continued to meet Kaituni.
In 2011, Kaituni told undercover reporters he was optimistic he could ensure the Duke’s presence at the launch of a proposed golf resort in Libya in return for a fee.
‘I can maybe influence him to be there for the opening,’ he said. ‘Maybe he will do it for me.’
Andrew and Kaituni have been spotted together in St Tropez and north Africa on several occasions, although Buckingham Palace has always played down their friendship, once describing the Libyan – who spent a year in prison in Tunisia for possessing illegal drugs – as simply a contact.
In 2011, Andrew stepped down from his role as UK trade envoy after his reputation was battered by disclosures about his links to controversial businessmen, among them Kaituni. He never recovered from disclosures about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a sex offender with whom he stayed in New York after Epstein had served a jail sentence for his offences.
His abilities as an envoy were also questioned after the WikiLeaks website published a US diplomatic cable written by an ambassador who described the Duke as ‘cocky’ and ‘rude’.
He was dogged by controversy almost from the day he took on the job and was nicknamed ‘Air Miles Andy’ by the tabloid press because of his travel bill. Buckingham Palace declined to comment yesterday.
Ambassador called the Duke ‘cocky and rude’