Libyan gun smuggler was at Royal wedding
Guest once fixed a secret meeting between Andrew and Gaddafi
A CONVICTED Libyan gun smuggler who once boasted of his influence over Prince Andrew was a guest at Friday’s Royal wedding, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Tarek Kaituni, 54, helped to broker secret meetings for the prince 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.
Mr Kaituni’s presence at Friday’s wedding will raise further questions about the prince’s judgment. The company he keeps has often been a source of embarrassment to the Royals.
Mr Kaituni is understood to have joined the 800 guests at St George’s Chapel,
Palace has always played down their friendship
Windsor, for the wedding of Andrew’s daughter Eugenie to Jack Brooksbank. Later he was a guest at an exclusive blacktie reception for the couple’s closest friends and family.
The Libyan once gave Eugenie’s sister Beatrice an £18,000 (€20,470) diamond necklace months before the prince 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 Mr Kaituni before suddenly changing his mind and confirming he was a guest at the wedding. ‘It was a nice wedding,’ he added.
Prince Andrew first became involved with Mr Kaituni, who now has US citizenship, in 2005. The same year their friendship was questioned when Mr 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.
Mr Kaituni introduced Andrew to Sakher El Materi, the ‘notoriously corrupt’ son-in-law of deposed Tunisian president Zine Ben Ali. He accompanied the prince to a meeting with Gaddafi at Materi’s Tuni- sian 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 Prince 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.
Prince Andrew is known to have met Gaddafi once more, in February 2009, also in private. He met Mr Mr Materi again in 2009, hosting a business lunch for the Tunisian at Buckingham Palace. Mr Materi fled to the Seychelles in 2011 after the uprising that toppled his father-inlaw. Months later, a court in Tunisia convicted him of corruption in absentia.
Throughout this time, Andrew continued to meet Mr Kaituni.
Prince Andrew and Mr 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, Prince 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 Mr Kaituni.