How ‘colossally arrogant’ Prince Andrew built shadowy inner circle of millionaire pals as ‘bulletproof’ royal jet-setter
PRINCE Andrew’s questionable taste in friends has landed him in hot water again – bumping him off the guest list for the Royal Family Christmas at Sandringham.
He and ex-wife Fergie are no longer expected to join the King and Queen for a festive lunch after an alleged Chinese spy with links to the Duke of York was publicly named for the first time.
The suspected spy – previously only known as H6 – has been revealed as businessman Yang Tengbo, who also goes by Chris Yang.
He has been barred from the country on the grounds he was considered to have engaged in “covert and deceptive activity” – although he has denied the charges.
Tengbo, named on Monday after a judge lifted a court order, is said to have used his close friendship with Andrew to secure invitations to St James’s Palace and Windsor Castle.
But this isn’t the first time the ‘party prince’ has found himself in hot water over his inner circle.
Over the years he has clocked up links with everyone from convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to a dictator, a gun-runner, fixers and a disgraced banker.
Royal biographer Christopher Wilson says: “It is my opinion that Prince Andrew is a man with low self-esteem. All these people are like iron filings drawn to a magnet because they are getting close to the Royal Family.
“And Andrew wanted to show his importance by introducing people to the Queen. It wasn’t as if he was sufficient, he had to show that he could get these people to the Queen. Well the moment the Queen died that was over as King Charles would have nothing to do with it or his contacts.
“People turned a blind eye because he was the Queen’s favourite son.
“It is incredible how people will still bow, even when things are going wrong or people are behaving badly.”
Many of Andrew’s questionable ties were nurtured in his years as Britain’s “special representative” for Trade and Investment, where he jetted around the world in luxury, earning himself the unfortunate nickname “Airmiles Andy.”
And eyebrows were raised throughout his ten-year tenure in the role for some of his decisions including lunching at Buckingham Palace with a “notorious” member of the former Tunisian regime, taking a holiday with a Libyan gun smuggler and claims he used an official trip to try to find a buyer for his home in the UK.
Christopher has long questioned Andrew’s actions – suggesting he was “colossally arrogant” and saw himself as “bulletproof” during his decade in the role – but is yet to receive any answers.
“After Andrew was dumped as Trade Ambassador, I did an investigation into who exactly he answered to as he swanned around the world,” he explains.
“Who fixed up his trips, who chose which countries he visited and who he met. Did he write any reports and, if so who were they sent to? Was the work he did evaluated? And which person was directly responsible for his activities as he represented our country abroad?”
Andrew left his trade envoy role in July 2011 just months after concerns were raised about his friendship with disgraced tycoon Jeffrey Epstein who was jailed for sex offences.
But previously to that the government body UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), which employed the Prince in his role without a salary, said: “The Duke’s unique position gives him unrivalled access to members of royal families, heads of state, government ministers and chief executives of companies”.
The role had taken him on expenses-paid delegations all over the world – where he met many of his controversial contacts.
Goga Ashkenazi
In 2007 Prince Andrew fell head over heels for Oxford-educated Kazakhstan socialite Goga.
Although there’s no suggestion of wrongdoing on her part, she introduced him to the movers and shakers at the helm of politics and business both there and in Azerbaijan.
Christoper says: “Prince Andrew’s ex-girlfriend Caroline Stanbury introduced him to Goga Ashkenazi and she is one of the people with a hand in this story.
“It was her ex – Timur Kulibayev – who bought Prince Andrew and Fergie’s marital home, Sunninghill House for £15million – £3million more than the asking price.
“Ashkenazi’s father was a top communist official in Moscow but she [moved with] the Kazakhstan ruling class and so introduced Andrew to all these people in Azerbaijan.
“He benefited from that – he certainly benefited from the extra £3million on the sale of his unsaleable house. So she was really a lynchpin in part of the deals that were clearly going on all the time he was a trade ambassador.”
Goga has always denied her alleged “fixer” role in the house sale, telling The Times: “I introduced them, that’s all.”
Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan
Andrew met the autocratic leader of Kazakhstan in 2007 and made several trips to the country, including once in 2008 to celebrate the President’s birthday.
In 2016, it was revealed that Andrew’s office had tried to broker a property deal between the Crown estate and the President’s son-in-law Timur Kulibayev for one of the Crown’s houses in Kensington.
It was the very same Timur Kulibayev who paid over the odds for Andrew and Fergie’s unloved mansion in Surrey.
Christopher explains: “If you are a member of the Royal Family there are any number of people who want to ingratiate themselves to you and they are enablers.”
Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan
Aliyev was one of many rulers Andrew met on his taxpayer-funded travels as trade envoy – despite the fact the president had been accused of numerous human rights violations.
These meetings included a formal lunch at Buckingham Palace, four meetings at the annual Davos forum and a visit by Andrew to the Azerbaijan capital Baku just weeks after a highly-disputed election in 2010 which stripped all seats from his opposition.
Christopher says: “We don’t know whether he ever made any reports as to the success or otherwise of the missions he went on and that went on for ten years.
“Did he or his private secretary ever write any reports saying ‘we’ve been to Azerbaijan and the benefits we have accrued by going there are x,y, and z?’ And if he didn’t send in any reports then what was the point of him going in the first place?”
Tarek Kaituni
The Libyan gunrunner also found himself a seat at the royal table thanks to his friendship with Andrew – he was a guest at Fergie’s 60th birthday and Eugenie’s wedding.
And he reportedly gifted Princess Beatrice an £18,000 diamond necklace for her 21st birthday.
Prince Andrew first became involved with Kaituni, who has US citizenship, in 2005 – the same year Kaituni was convicted of attempting to smuggle a submachine gun from Holland to France.
It’s believed Kaituni arranged secret meetings for the Duke with Colonel Gaddafi, which the BBC described as ‘private’ rather than officially arranged summits.
In 2011 he boasted to undercover reporters that he could arrange for Andrew to make an appearance at the launch of a golf resort in Libya, in exchange for a fee.
Selman Turk
In 2022, The Telegraph claimed that Prince Andrew was introduced by Kaituni to an alleged fraudster who reportedly paid him more than £1million.
The Duke of York was introduced to Selman Turk by Tarek Kaituni in the early summer of 2019 and the pair struck up a friendship. The Prince attended dinners at Turk’s London home.
Turk is alleged to have facilitated payments to the Duke totalling £1.1million, to his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson of £225,000 and to Princess Eugenie of £25,000.
It was also alleged that Turk stole the money from Nebahat Evyap Isbilen, a 77-year-old Turkish millionairess, who had trusted him with moving more than $87million out of her homeland when she fled political persecution.
He was later convicted of contempt of court after he was ordered to disclose what he had done with Ms Isbilen’s money, but failed to do so. He was jailed for 12 months, but the Court of Appeal later suspended the prison sentence.
Christopher says it isn’t unusual for people to want to make extravagant gifts to royalty – and Andrew saw no reason why he should not accept them.
“People love to do this, they want to do it,” he says. “When you are royal you don’t have to do anything. People will come and butter you up and offer you the world.
“I don’t think Andrew saw why he shouldn’t do it. He is colossally arrogant and very stupid. At the same time he is clever enough to be able to accrue considerable wealth.”
Sakher el-Materi
The son-in-law of Tunisian dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali attended a lunch, hosted by Prince Andrew at Buckingham Palace, in 2011, along with 15 bosses of multinational corporations.
At the time, Ben Ali’s government was considered to have one of the worst human rights records in the world by charities including Amnesty International.
The meeting was said to be part of his role to help broker deals for British business overseas, and many of his engagements were in the Middle East.
Materi later fled Tunisia after the Arab Spring and was convicted in absentia of corruption and embezzlement.
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi
The second son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was once seen as his heir apparent.
English-speaking, he was seen as the reformist face of the regime, but following the 2011 revolution he was also accused of crimes against humanity.
He was also allegedly friends with the Duke of York, although this was denied.
The Duke had met Saif al-Islam Gaddafi twice in Libya in an official capacity in October and November 2007, months after BP announced it had struck a £450million deal with the Libya Investment Corporation
Speaking in the Commons in 2011 after the Prime Minister’s update on the Libyan crisis, Chris Bryant, a former Foreign Office minister, said: “Isn’t it increasingly difficult to explain the behaviour of the UKTI (UK Trade and Investment) special ambassador for trade, who is not only a very close friend of Saif Gaddafi, but is also a close friend of the convicted Libyan gun smuggler Tarek Kaituni?
“Isn’t it time we dispensed with the services of the Duke of York?”
Jeffrey Epstein
Although not linked to his trade envoy job, being close acquaintances with disgraced financier and convicted paedophile Epstein was Andrew’s biggest faux pas.
The pair allegedly first met in 1999 when they were introduced by mutual friend Ghislaine Maxwell, now herself behind bars for sex trafficking.
By the early 2000s Epstein was a frequent guest at royal events including Andrew’s 40th birthday party and Princess Eugenie’s birthday bash in 2006. Just eight days later he was arrested and charged with soliciting prostitution.
He was jailed in 2008 after which Andrew said he had cut all ties with him – but they were infamously pictured on a walk together in Central Park in 2010. It later emerged that Epstein had stepped in to pay off some of Sarah Ferguson’s debts.
Epstein was arrested on new sex trafficking charges in 2019 and took his own life in prison. Andrew’s alleged relationship with Virginia Giuffre – who was underage at the time – then came under the spotlight.
A disastrous Newsnight interview, in 2019, led to him stepping back from royal life and, while Andrew denied anything untoward happened between him and Ms Giuffre, they settled out of court in 2022 for an undisclosed sum thought to be around £12million.
Statement from Tengbo Yang
In a statement issued on his behalf, Mr Yang said he had done “nothing wrong or unlawful” and descriptions of him as an alleged spy were “entirely untrue”.
The statement said he had voluntarily waived his right to anonymity.
Mr Yang said: “Due to the high level of speculation and misreporting in the media and elsewhere, I have asked my legal team to disclose my identity.
“I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue.
“This is why I applied for a review of the Home Office decision in the first place, and why I am seeking permission to appeal the SIAC decision.
“It is also why an order extending my anonymity up to the point of determination of the appeal process was granted.
“I have been excluded from seeing most of the evidence that was used against me under a process which is widely acknowledged by SIAC practitioners as inherently unfair: decisions are made based on secret evidence and closed proceedings, which has been described as ‘taking blind shots at a hidden target’.
“On their own fact finding, even the three judges in this case concluded that there was ‘not an abundance of evidence’ against me, their decision was ‘finely balanced’, and there could be an ‘innocent explanation’ for my activities. This has not been reported in the media.
“The political climate has changed, and unfortunately, I have fallen victim to this.
“When relations are good, and Chinese investment is sought, I am welcome in the UK. When relations sour, an anti-China stance is taken, and I am excluded.
“I am an independent self-made entrepreneur and I have always aimed to foster partnerships and build bridges between East and West.
“I have dedicated my professional life in the UK to building links between British and Chinese businesses.
“My activities have played a part in bringing hundreds of millions of pounds of investment into the UK.
“I built my private life in the UK over two decades and love the country as my second home. I would never do anything to harm the interests of the UK.”