Goga leads new wave of elite holidaymakers to the Cape
The Virginia Roberts saga brings home how tawdry he has become in middle age, writes Victoria Lambert
A GLAMOROUS billionaire and socialite close to Britain’s Prince Andrew is among a throng of wealthy visitors who chose to celebrate the festive season in Cape Town.
Goga Ashkenazi, 34, a former oil and gas tycoon, is among a new wave of holidaymakers who appear to have snubbed traditional stomping grounds such as the Caribbean for a stopover in the Mother City.
Like many of these elite visitors, she kept a fairly low profile, apart from a few posts on Instagram.
Prominent Cape Town businessman Maurice Levin has Russian friends holidaying in the city. They have also rented a home in Keurboomstrand near Plettenberg Bay.
“They had a butler, a driver, a cook and 24-hour security. They loved the food, the sushi, fresh fish and our wine. They said there is so much value here and they did not want to go where the people are, preferring to stay home,” said Levin.
Judging by Ashkenazi’s Instagram account, she fell in love with Africa.
She zipped around with an entourage on a private aircraft, went on a game safari at Kruger National Park and sampled vino in the Cape Winelands. She posted videos of leopards and a lioness feeding her cubs.
Ashkenazi stayed at Royal Malewane Lodge at Kruger, where a double luxury suite costs R15 600 per person per night.
The entire lodge, sleeping 20 guests, can be booked for R320 000 per night.
The Kazakhstan-born and Ox- ford-educated entrepreneur is also chairwoman and creative director of the fashion label Vionnet.
She set tongues wagging way back as a 22-year-old when photographs emerged of her cavorting topless on a yacht with Italian businessman Flavio Briatore.
In 2010, she was snapped with Prince Andrew at a party and in 2007 in the royal box at the Ascot racecourse.
South African event co-ordinator and stylist Julie Killias — doyenne of the local party scene — said a surprising number of VIPs chose to celebrate the end of 2014 in Cape Town.
“A lot of people took preference to Cape Town instead of St Barts this year. It shows these people are coming here when they could be going anywhere,” said Killias.
However, several of her elite clients had complained about poor service.
“I’ve had a lot of complaints about service in restaurants. The food has been good, the service has been bad and the traffic has been appalling,” she said.
“There is no way we can sit back on our laurels and think we can have this group of people coming in and not give them absolutely seamless, perfect
It shows these people are coming here when they could be going anywhere
service. It has to be world-class service. That’s what they’re used to.
“They wanted to be here. They brought family and friends . . . but we’ve got to understand these people can go anywhere, spend whatever they want,” said Killias.
Some of the high-flyers de- parted South Africa this week, heading for the famous ski resort Courchevel in the French Alps — popular with wealthy Russian oligarchs at this time of the year as they celebrate Russian Orthodox Christmas on January 7.
SHARING a birthday with him, I used to have a soft spot for Prince Andrew. Five years younger than the House of Windsor’s playboy prince, teenage me watched in awe and excitement as the handsome helicopter pilot saw action in the Falklands, returned with a rose between his teeth as a hero, frolicked with a soft-porn actress and enjoyed an exuberant wedding to the playful aristo-next-door Sarah Ferguson.
Now I struggle to recall those feelings.
I see a grey and jowly, tightlipped middle-aged man, with a penchant for the tawdrier elements of the global jet set; a man about whom we know little other than his passion for golf, who carries an inflated sense of his importance and that of his offspring, and has an embarrassing, cash-hungry ex-wife who promotes gadgets on US shopping channels.
How did he fall so far? For years now, scandals have rolled in as regularly as the breakers of the South Atlantic, entangling the Duke of York and his family in the detritus of arrogance and bad judgment.
The latest scandal, rooted in an alleged liaison with an underage “sex slave” provided by financier and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, is pitiful, but somehow depressingly unsurprising. Yes, all allegations by Virginia Roberts are vehemently denied, but we are already weary from lurid tales of S&M-themed parties, and pictures of him lying amid bikiniclad beauties on superyachts.
Nor do we admire his equally “exotic” taste in business pals. Epstein aside, they reportedly include Muammar Gaddafi’s son Saif and a convicted Libyan gun smuggler, Tarek Kaituni. Then there is Sakher El Materi, a Tunisian under investigation for money laundering, whom he entertained at Buckingham Palace.
And what about Goga Ashkenazi, whose on-off partner Timur Kulibayev, the son-in-law of the president of Kazakhstan, purchased the duke’s Sunninghill Park home for £3-million more than its £12-million asking price in 2007? Most recently, he was the “dear guest’’ of billionaire despot Ilham Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan, who has repeatedly been accused of appalling human rights abuses.
Perhaps we would not care quite so much about the company he keeps if we believed that the prince really was the hard-working royal his aides try to present. Over at Clarence House, Charles and his family can do no wrong. We coo over George, sigh over Kate and William, admire Camilla’s steadfast loyalty to her longtime love, and even smile fondly when Harry is photographed naked in Las Vegas.
Andrew must dream of such easy popularity. Yet the reality is that the Prince of Wales and his family have earned our re- spect through their hard work for The Firm. While Andrew . . . remind me again, what does he do exactly?
I know he is no longer the special trade envoy for the government body UK Trade and Investment. That gig went after the initial revelations in 2011 of his friendship with Epstein. And I am assuming — hoping — that his position as rear-admiral of the Royal Navy is more of an honorary than a tactical role.
A friend of the Yorks tells me I am being unfair. She says that if we want to know what Andrew does, the evidence is all there. But the media ignores it — perhaps because he does not have a photo-friendly Camilla, Kate or Sophie on his arm.
“He works nonstop,” she says. “It’s just that the rest of the world doesn’t see it. He’s very involved with apprentices and entrepreneurship. People may not read the Court Circular any more, but if you look at his Twitter account, you can see how passionate he is about business and creating jobs.”
She wonders whether it is simply that we like our labels — that, having decided on the role Andrew is to play in the Windsor soap opera (that of dodgy uncle or Airmiles Andy, the queen’s overindulged favourite son who is easily lured astray by those with zillions to spend) we refuse to recognise him for what he is: a hard-working royal with business and charity interests. Certainly, a look at his website confirms he travels the world on behalf of the UK, glad-handing and brokering deals.
Yet, however admirable his output, it remains tainted for me by his pomposity and disregard for the public. Why does he not work harder at good PR to offset the bad?
Perhaps, then, he wouldn’t seem so petulant and self-in- dulgent — whether it be moaning about a shortage of bodyguards for his daughters (just five on the recent ski trip from which he was hauled back to Mother for crisis talks) or turning a business trip into more of a golf tour.
Some years ago, I tried to set up an interview with Andrew for a charitable cause I was told he was desperate to champion. After many months of me offering to meet any place, any time, I expressed the merest hint of frustration at the prince’s inability to fit me in, only to be told that the duke was a “very busy person”.
“Aren’t we all,” I replied, crisply, and got on with some real work. So should he.
How did he fall so far? For years now, scandals have rolled in as regularly as the breakers of the South Atlantic