Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor sold his £15m Berkshire mansion to billionaire Kazakh oligarch 'who used funds from company linked to bribery' | Retrui News | Retrui
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor sold his £15m Berkshire mansion to billionaire Kazakh oligarch 'who used funds from company linked to bribery'
SOURCE:Daily Mail
The former Duke of York may have inadvertently benefitted from proceeds of crime when his mansion in Berkshire was sold to Timur Kulibayev in 2007 for £15million.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor sold his house for millions of pounds over its asking price to a Kazakh oligarch who used cash from a firm linked to bribery, an investigation has claimed.
The former Duke of York may have inadvertently benefitted from proceeds of crime when his Sunninghill Park mansion in Berkshire - a wedding gift from Queen Elizabeth II - was sold to Timur Kulibayev in 2007 for £15million.
Kulibayev, who has consistently denied what he called 'politically motivated' allegations of corruption and has never been charged with any criminal offences, part-funded the purchase through a firm called Enviro Pacific Investments based in the British Virgin Islands.
It has now emerged that an Italian businessman pleaded guilty to bribing the Kazakh over expensive oil contracts; Italian prosecutors later alleged that one of the firms used to channel bribes made payments to Enviro Pacific.
Questions were raised about the sale of Sunninghill three years later, when Kulibayev was named as the buyer in the media. His lawyers say he has never owned or controlled Enviro Pacific, and that the company has never held assets on his behalf.
The Kazakh - who is said to own homes in Mayfair and Cambridge, as well as several European properties including a German castle - had extremely close ties with his country's then-president, the autocratic Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev, who is also his father-in-law.
Andrew went goose shooting with Nazarbayev in May 2008, visiting Kazakhstan several times in his role as a Government trade envoy.
There is no evidence the ex-prince knew where Kulibayev had sourced the funds from to pay for Sunninghill, which was bought via the Unity Assets Corporation, an offshore trust.
And Andrew said in 2010: 'It's not my business the second the price is paid. If that is the offer, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth and suggest they have overpaid me.'
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor may have unwillingly received proceeds of crime when he sold his house to a Kazakh businessman in 2007 after Italian prosecutors alleged that a loan used to buy the house may have been funded from bribes
He sold Sunninghill Park (pictured) to a Kazakh billionaire in 2007, after moving to Royal Lodge
Kazakh billionaire Timur Kulibayev paid £3million above the asking price, and was given a loan by a company that it is alleged had received bribes connected to Kazakhstan's oil industry
But money laundering expert Tom Keatinge, of the Centre for Finance and Security, said his advisers should have at least looked into the 'red flags' associated with the purchase.
Under the Money Laundering Regulations introduced in 2004, lawyers were expected to conduct strict checks on the sources of funds for buying property.
The UK was extremely concerned about Nazarbayev's regime, under which Kazakhstan is said to have become a hive of corruption; the £15million sale price was reportedly £3m more than the asking price, and millions more than its alleged market value.
Kulibayev's bid was also said to be the only one to be made - a claim denied by the Kazakh oligarch, who maintains that he was seeking to outbid others - and came after the house had languished on the market for several years.
Mr Keatinge told BBC Panorama, which carried out the investigation: 'Regardless of who you are - royal, oligarch or billionaire - those acting for you in any property transaction should be alert to the risks, both legal and reputational, inherent in offshore investments in UK property.'
Kulibayev held several high-level positions in government when his father-in-law was in charge, heading up state-owned oil and gas firms and the country's sovereign wealth fund.
He has faced multiple allegations of corruption, which he has repeatedly and vehemently denied.
Lawyers for Mr Kulibayev insist he has has never engaged in bribery or corruption, and the funds used to acquire Sunninghill Park were entirely legitimate.
They have branded the BBC's reporting as 'defamatory', and have vowed to take legal action.
Italian magazine L'Espresso, together with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, identified a 2017 Monza case in which Italian oil executive Agostino Bianchi pleaded guilty to bribing three Kazakh officials, including Kulibayev.
The bribes were in exchange for what judges called the 'non-impartial selection' of Biacnhi's firm for public contracts in 2007 that netted him a $7million (£5.2million) profit, which was confiscated by the judge.
Bianchi was given a 16-month suspended sentence in a plea bargain deal.
Kulibayev was not charged. His lawyers say he has never engaged in bribery or corruption, and was unaware of the case; they have accused the BBC of 'mischaracterising' the Italian proceedings, claiming there were no findings of bribes paid to Kulibayev.
The BBC reported that one of the firms used to channel bribes was named in the case as Aventall, which the Mail understands is based in the British Virgin Islands.
Aventall, prosecutors in a separate case in Milan later alleged, had made payments of a 'corrupt nature' to Enviro Pacific Investments - the company which lent the money for the Sunninghill purchase.
Some $6.5m (£3.27m) had been promised, but evidence could only be found for $1.5m (£755,000), the last being made in 2007 shortly before contracts were exchanged for Andrew's house.
The Milan proceedings were dismissed in January 2017, after prosecutors could not definitively link the payments to specific contracts, or identify who benefitted.
Andrew visited Kazakhstan several times as a trade envoy and was close with president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who counts Kulibayev as a son-in-law (Andrew pictured meeting Nazarbayev in 2010)
President Nazarbayev met the Queen several times on visits to Britain, including here in 2015
Andrew with Kazakh socialite Goga Ashkenazi, who is said to have brokered the deal for Sunninghill Park
It was unfavourably compared to a Tesco supermarket in its design and nicknamed 'SouthYork', due to its resemblance to the Southfork ranch that is home to the Ewing family in US TV show Dallas.
He struggled to sell the house: Andrew is reported to have tried to sell the house to Gulf royals on a 2003 visit to Bahrain, according to then-deputy ambassador Simon Wilson.
In this time, the ex-prince became patron of the British-Kazakh Society jointly with President Nazarbayev. He visited Kazakhstan in 2006, and later the same year Nazarbayev visited Britain, meeting the Queen.
The eventual sale to Kulibayev is alleged to have been brokered by Kazakh businesswoman and socialite Goga Ashkenazi, a one-time friend of Prince Andrew who was pictured with him at social functions in the 2000s and early 2010s.
Ashkenazi was once Kulibayev's mistress, and has had two sons by him: Adam, born in 2007 and Alan, born in 2012.
She described Andrew as a 'very, very close friend' at her 30th birthday party and told Hello! magazine in 2010: 'It was like any property deal between friends.'
She told the BBC she had not had any dealings with him for 16 years. The Daily Mail has not been able to verify the claims, and has contacted her for comment.
Emails later obtained by the Mail on Sunday revealed that Andrew allegedly sought to act as a 'fixer' for Kulibayev as he enquired about buying a Crown Estate-owned property in Kensington.
No deal was ever made, and Kulibayev has denied that this was the case.
At the time of the sale, Kulibayev was thought to be one of the most powerful men in Kazakhstan, when the country was rife with corruption under President Nazarbayev, who was elected unopposed after serving as Prime Minister before the collapse of the USSR.
Kulibayev is married to the president's daughter, Dinara Nazarbayeva, in 1990 and was named in a tranche of US embassy cables as one of the four 'most powerful gate-keepers' around the then-leader, who stood down in 2019.
The pair were pictured at glamorous events throughout the 2000s. They are pictured at her 30th birthday party where she called him a 'very, very good friend' - but now says she has not spoken to him for years
Sunninghill Park was demolished and rebuilt (above) by Kulibayev after falling into disrepair
Lawyers for Timur Kulibayev have insisted that he gathered his wealth legitimately, and that he is not under any investigation
The cables, leaked in 2010 by Wikileaks in an episode dubbed 'Cablegate', noted: 'Timur Kulibayev is currently the favored presidential son-in-law, on the Forbes 500 list of billionaires (as is his wife separately), and the ultimate controller of 90% of the economy of Kazakhstan.'
Maksat Idenov, then first vice president of Kazakhstan's national oil and gas firm KazMunayGas, was described in the transmission as alleging that Kulibayev had an 'avarice for large bribes'.
Sunninghill was allowed to fall into disrepair before the businessman demolished it and replaced it with a 14-bed mansion in 2016. It is said to lie empty.
Buckingham Palace and legal firm Farrer and Co, which acted for Andrew, both declined to comment to the Daily Mail, citing client confidentiality.
The Palace and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor have been contacted for comment.
Since the fall of Nazarbayev's regime, Kazakhstan has sought to wipe the slate clean, launching a legal case in Switzerland to recover money from those it says benefitted from corruption.
It was reported in early 2025 that Kulibayev was seeking to make a $1billion payment to the Kazakh government as it investigates how he built his wealth when his father-in-law was in charge of the country.
The deal would be made up of payments and investments, and come with no admission of wrongdoing, Bloomberg had reported.
Timur Kulibayev's lawyers told Panorama that his wealth had been gathered through decades of business activity, and that he is not under any investigation.
They added that any suggestion he was seeking to pay compensation for illegally acquired assets was 'inaccurate'.
In a statement to the Daily Mail, a spokesperson for the Kazakh said: 'Mr Kulibayev has never engaged in bribery or corruption, and the funds used to acquire Sunninghill Park were entirely legitimate. Legal action is being taken in relation to the report.
'Despite extensive correspondence with the BBC’s editorial and legal teams, setting out the true facts of the matter, the BBC has still chosen to publish this defamatory article.
'The BBC has seriously mischaracterised the Italian proceedings, in which there were no findings of bribes paid to Mr Kulibayev.
'The purchase of Sunninghill Park was a straightforward commercial transaction, partly funded with a fully documented loan from a company which Mr Kulibayev neither directly nor indirectly controlled.
'All proper due diligence on behalf of the purchaser took place at the time. The loan was repaid in full, with a commercial interest rate applied.'