Continuing the Daily Mail’s exclusive serialisation of an explosive new biography, based on four years of painstaking research and hundreds of interviews, ANDREW LOWNIE gives a startling insight into the Duke of York’s hedonistic life, sexual proclivities and breathtaking sense of entitlement.
Yesterday, his controversial friendship with billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein was forensically scrutinised. Today, in the third extract, the historian analyses how Prince Andrew went ‘under the radar’ to boost his personal wealth…
It remains a mystery how Prince Andrew has been able to enjoy such an extravagant lifestyle.
He travels by private jet and has a collection of expensive cars (including a £220,000 Bentley and a brand-new £80,000 Range Rover). He lives in 30-bedroom Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park, on which he spent £7.5 million refurbishing, painting it white from pink and adding a swimming pool, driving range and golf course, and which has annual running costs of £250,000.
And yet he has no obvious sources of income beyond his Royal Navy pension, family money he may have inherited, and handouts, first from Queen Elizabeth and now King Charles.
An acquaintance compared him to a hot air balloon: ‘He seems to float in very rarefied circles without any visible means of support.’
Yet he is believed to make substantial sums from commercial activities that go ‘under the radar’ – a description he himself has been known to endorse for his money-making.
When a business contact suggested this way of working so the prince could act without much accountability, Andrew responded: ‘I like your thinking.’
An investigation by The Mail on Sunday concluded that Andrew had ‘leveraged’ his status and his wealthy contacts made during the course of official work on behalf of British taxpayers to act as a facilitator, helping businessmen set up lucrative deals all over the world.
From early on, he has been very keen on accruing his own fortune.
Andrew had ‘leveraged’ his status during the course of official work on behalf of British taxpayers to act as a facilitator, helping businessmen set up lucrative deals all over the world
Much of his time was spent in the Middle East, Prince Andrew at the Bahrain Gran Prix in 2004
At school, Gordonstoun contemporaries noticed how impressed he appeared to be with the extreme wealth he encountered among some other pupils. And he seems willing to pursue it, even if it makes him vulnerable. Tim Reilly, vice-president of the international financial advisory firm Kroll, was with Andrew in Russia in his days as a trade envoy.
‘On an official Kremlin Museums tour, he was angling to be given a Fabergé egg. Even the Russians were stunned by his undisguised avarice.’
Reilly reckons: ‘Putin could finish Andrew (and the Royal Family) any time he likes with photos, tales and evidence he no doubt has on Andrew in Russia.’
It was in that role as Britain’s special representative for international trade and investment, which he took up in September 2001, that multiple opportunities presented themselves to the prince. The job came his way after his Royal Navy career ground to a halt. After success as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands War, he’d had his first command, captaining a 60-metre minesweeper carrying out fishery protection duties.
The obvious next step should have been command of a frigate, but the feeling was that Andrew had neither the abilities nor the desire to take this path. He was tipped as second-in-command of the warship HMS Cumberland, commanded by his brother-in-law, Captain Tim Laurence, Princess Anne’s husband, but the expected move never happened.
Passed over for promotion to commander three times, he was told by the First Sea Lord, Admiral Jock Slater, he had no future in the Senior Service, and it was announced that Andrew would leave the Navy in 1999 after 20 years.
Part of the problem, it was claimed, was his lack of a university degree and that he had no aptitude for maths. But a senior officer put his failure to make progress down to ‘a lack of application and a lack of attention to fulfilling his duties properly’.
In the event, the prince would stay much longer in the service than intended. A job was found for him in the Directorate of Naval Operations at the Ministry of Defence and he was promoted to commander – probably at the instigation of Charles, who ‘talked’ to a few admirals about finding a role for his brother. The suspicion was that the Royal Family was keen to keep Andrew within the structure and discipline of the Royal Navy.
There were mutterings of preferential treatment, however, from fellow officers. One said: ‘Everyone knows he only got this job because it is a swan-about and will enable him to travel the world, shaking hands and playing golf.’ As if to prove the point, on his second day in the post the prince was playing 18 holes in an inter-forces tournament.
Andrew’s eventual leaving in July 2001 was marked by an interview with the MOD’s in-house journal, in which he claimed to be worn out from working 14-hour days. ‘I was doing too much.’ This caused a chuckle among colleagues, given that ‘he always leaves here with the rest of us at 6pm’.
A newspaper pointed out that, in the previous month, he’d had a fortnight in the Bahamas with his ex-wife and daughters, a weekend in Portugal golfing, three days in Spain at a charity golf match and three days in New York with Ghislaine Maxwell. He had stayed on in Miami at Jeffrey Epstein’s beach house rather than return for Eugenie’s 11th birthday party at Disneyland Paris.
In September 2001 Andrew officially took up his new role as special representative, succeeding the Duke of Kent, who had held the post since 1976. The job was unpaid, but he received a stipend of £249,000 a year from his mother, who approved the appointment. He was entitled to claim expenses.
Andrew would be directed by ministers. An assistant private secretary with trade experience was seconded from the Foreign Office to support him.
Senior Foreign Office sources declared that he would be kept on a tight rein to ensure he had no opportunity to let his personal interests interfere with his official duties as the figurehead of the export industry: ‘There is no way that we will let British trade policy be determined by the location of the world’s best golf courses.’
It was claimed that Prince Charles tried to block Andrew’s new role as ‘a disaster waiting to happen’. A Palace source said the Prince of Wales was extremely concerned that Andrew ‘won’t be able to resist the temptation of mixing business with pleasure’.
Prince Andrew, in 2004, visiting the £170million circuit being built in Shanghai for China’s first Grand Prix
Andrew spent a fortnight in the Bahamas, a weekend in Portugal golfing, three days in Spain at a charity golf match and three days in New York with Ghislaine Maxwell, writes Andrew Lownie
One of Andrew’s first trips as special representative was to Bahrain, where the main item on the agenda was the sale of British-made Hawk aircraft.
But to everyone’s astonishment Andrew ignored his official brief and suggested to King Hamad, ruler of the Gulf state, that he’d be better off leasing them rather than buying them. It was not helpful to UK interests and led to Andrew being known among the British diplomatic community there as ‘His Buffoon Highness’.
A diplomat said: ‘He frequently refused to follow his brief – we wondered if he had actually read it – and appeared to regard himself as an expert in every matter.’
He would ignore all advice and plunge straight in. During meetings with Gulf royals, he used the opportunity to hawk around Sunninghill Park, the Yorks’ family home back in the UK, up for sale in the aftermath of his divorce.
Whenever possible he would use his official role to indulge other activities. A trade visit to Saudia Arabia was combined with a visit to the Bahrain Grand Prix, where he was joined by family members. A few days later, he was at the Masters golf tournament in Georgia, paid for by the sport’s ruling body. He then undertook a five-day trip to China, the first senior member of the Royal Family since the Queen to visit since 1986, mainly at the request of British oil and gas companies, but also to see the £170 million circuit being built in Shanghai for China’s first Grand Prix.
F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone was keen to embrace China, and Andrew was ‘his point man’, according to one expert who helped close a deal.
Some 3,000 people were approached while researching Entitled: The Rise And Fall of The House Of York by Andrew Lownie
A diplomat organising the visit remembered how Andrew, with a large retinue, insisted on staying in the Presidential Suite of a five-star hotel. ‘He held a lavish and unnecessary planning breakfast each day in his suite, yet he did not seem to have been briefed or have any interest in being briefed.’
When Andrew had taken on his trade role, his brother Charles had described it as a job needing ‘tact and discretion’. These, though, were not Andrew’s strong points.
When he couldn’t be bothered to engage he was openly rude, such as on an official trip to Brazil where he opened the Prince Andrew Theatre, which housed the British Consulate General, the British Council, a library and exhibition galleries.
Ushered to a seat in the front row, he sat stony-faced and refused to address a word to the dignitaries on either side of him. When a local band played Beatles’ songs, he sneered that they should stick to Brazilian music.
At a reception later, as eminent Brazilians waited to be presented to him, he simply turned on his heels and headed for the exit – with the British ambassador running after him trying to call the cars and alert security.
It seemed that, as was noted on numerous occasions, ‘if something was boring or did not interest him, he would brush it aside without a thought as to how it may upset people’.
But for all the criticism – and there was plenty of it – Andrew also had his supporters. His office claimed that of his 446 royal engagements in 2006, 293 were business-related and that companies were keen to use him. ‘He has helped us win half a billion pounds of business in the last few years,’ said the chief executive of an engineering firm, mostly in orders for naval ships.
A journalist who accompanied Andrew on a trip to Kazakhstan was equally impressed. He was able to ‘get you access you don’t get with an ordinary person – to the president, to business leaders, to oil fields’.
But Andrew was also conducting business of his own. In 2007 he finally managed to sell Sunninghill, which the Queen had given as a wedding gift to her son and had been on the market for five years. The sale was negotiated by a wealthy Kazakh businessman.
The buyer, it emerged three years later, was Timur Kulibayev, a billionaire oil and gas tycoon and son-in-law of the then president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, whom Andrew knew well from his countless official and private visits to the country, most recently when he had gone goose-shooting with him.
There was some surprise that Kulibayev had paid £3 million more than the £12 million asking price, though there had been no other bids, and there were suspicions that there might be more behind the transaction. Buckingham Palace was quick to put out a denial of any impropriety: ‘To suggest the duke has personally benefited from his public work in Kazakhstan is utterly untrue.’
But another of Nazarbayev’s son-in-laws, Rakhat Aliyev, later claimed the house deal had been a sweetener. ‘When it is necessary to get some information, or any other business of the president’s in the UK, Prince Andrew could be asked to do something or to clarify something or to know something.’
The duke went on to act as a fixer for a foreign consortium that wanted to build water and sewage networks in Kazakhstan. His commission was £3.83 million.
A woman who knew him there said: ‘Andrew loved Kazakhstan because he could do whatever he wanted without media scrutiny. He did a lot of business deals in the oil and gas industry. He made a fortune. And he didn’t have to invest a penny. President Nazarbayev loved the prestige of including the prince in major business deals. It was win-win for both parties.’
But, back in London, Andrew’s penchant for keeping the company of foreign billionaires, whose business activities were not always transparent and who might use him as a ‘trophy asset’ to impress others, was of increasing concern.
Prince Andrew with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the opening ceremony of the first China International Import Expo in 2018
In November 2008, he took a four-day holiday in Tunisia paid for by Tarek Kaituni, a convicted Libyan gun-smuggler, who Andrew had first met in 2005. He then went on to visit Colonel Gaddafi in Libya – his third visit to Gaddafi in seven months, none of them arranged by UK Trade and Investment, though the duke was always accompanied by protection officers paid for by the taxpayer.
Andrew had also become friendly with Saif Gaddafi, the 35-year-old second son of the dictator, who acted as his father’s ‘fixer’ and whom Andrew was to meet three times between August 2008 and March 2009.
Andrew returned to Libya, a country with huge gas and oil fields, on a week’s private visit, travelling with only his bodyguard, ostensibly as a tourist looking at archaeological treasures – not a subject in which he’d previously shown great interest.
He was seen to be becoming perilously close to Ilham Aliyev, the authoritarian and corrupt president of Azerbaijan, the country in the Caucasus whose regime was accused of torturing protesters, rigging elections and throwing political opponents in jail. Local media suggested the duke had his own business interests in the country, including a golf complex on the shores of the Caspian Sea.
Through Aliyev, Andrew met one of the country’s leading oligarchs, Jahangir Askerov, who ran Azerbaijan Airlines. Askerov was supposedly trying to gain a foothold in Britain and Andrew was said to be advising him. He was to become a key business contact for the duke.
Though Andrew had a series of meetings to promote British trade, one of the country’s leading independent journalists spoke for many when he said: ‘We just do not understand exactly what it is Andrew does, or why he needs to come here so often.’
It is indeed difficult to establish the complete story of Andrew’s activities in the Central Asian republic as people are scared to talk because of his connections to its powerful elite.
But it was not just what he was up to in Azerbaijan that was being queried. A former British ambassador to Tunisia wrote to the Foreign Secretary asking for Andrew to be sacked because his hobnobbing with ‘dodgy’ Arab businessmen was doing ‘serious damage to the Royal Family and to Britain’s political, diplomatic and commercial interests’.
There was further unease after it became known that the Libyan businessman Tarek Kaituni, a guest at Princess Beatrice’s 21st birthday party, at which he had given her an £18,000 diamond necklace, had boasted that he could ‘influence’ the senior royal to support certain commercial projects.
What also caused consternation was that his office as trade representative appeared to be staffed by his own royal employees, with just a single Foreign Office official. And yet his ‘expenses’ were covered by UK Trade and Industry while other government departments picked up travel, staffing, security and other bills. There was a reticence, though, in Whitehall to explain and justify what he actually did.
One of the problems was that his role and the governance of it were never particularly clear. Who was he supposed to report to? ‘There were concerns about who he was seeing,’ said a diplomat, ‘and that he had a freelance business career with a parallel agenda fixing meetings with people who were not part of his mission.’
But no one in authority would confront him for fear of being accused of an attack on a member of the Royal Family. So, whenever there was an issue, it tended to be quietly dropped. Increasingly the duke, with his own agenda in mind, took it upon himself to decide which countries he should visit. Increasingly, much of his time was spent in the Middle East, where, as a spokesman explained: ‘Potentates like meeting princes. As the son of the Queen, he opens doors. He can raise problems with a crown prince and four or five weeks later the difficulties have been overcome and the contract can be signed.’
All well and good – except that one ambassador to Bahrain never saw evidence that visits led to any contracts. ‘I found him weird. He would rant and was unable to read a room. He behaved like a teenager, boasting he could connect easily to Bill Gates.’
Many diplomats speak of how Andrew’s staff requested that attractive women be invited to events, with a private secretary specifying: ‘He likes blondes.’ To which one consul replied: ‘I’m a diplomat, not a pimp.’
His official diary was carefully arranged for his personal benefit. A trip to Qatar to meet four royals and attend a reception given by Shell was followed by a five-day holiday in Abu Dhabi as a guest of its royal family. His office refused to explain a mysterious gap of four days for a private trip between leaving Britain by private jet and arriving in Qatar, but the suspicion was that he had been in Azerbaijan.
On a three-day visit to Indonesia, where Britain needed to develop stronger trade links, he produced his own list of businessmen that he wished to see, some of whom were regarded as unsavoury characters.
Meanwhile, back in London there was concern when it was revealed the prince had been hosting dinners at Buckingham Palace for businessmen and bankers.
A similar situation of confusing his royal role with his own private interests occurred after Andrew offered to act as patron of a London business school if his younger daughter Eugenie was accepted for an MBA course for free. The offer was declined.
In 2011, the prince stepped down from his role as trade representative – since when the British government has failed to release any significant information about his time as a taxpayer-funded special representative, in spite of numerous Freedom of Information requests. Nor has the duke ever fully addressed the criticisms directed against him or explained the monies paid to him.
A former Buckingham Palace staff member who worked with the prince claimed that many inside The Firm spent four years actively nudging the Press away from negative Andrew stories in return for cooperation in other ways. But, he added: ‘There are dozens, if not hundreds, more unwise connections to uncover from Andrew’s years in the role.’
- Adapted from Entitled, by Andrew Lownie (William Collins, £22), to be published August 14. © Andrew Lownie 2025. To order a copy for £18.70 (offer valid to 16/08/25; UK P&P free on orders over £25), go to or call 020 3176 2937.
Mystery ‘£750,000 wedding gift for Bea’
In 2022, a High Court case shed unexpected light on Andrew’s finances. It was that of Turkish millionairess Nebahat Isbilen, who was suing a former Goldman Sachs banker, Selman Turk, for £40 million of funds, which she claimed she had entrusted to him to move out of Turkey to safeguard from the Turkish authorities, and which he had misused.
Mrs Isbilen alleged that funds had been used for things unconnected with her, including £750,000 paid into Prince Andrew’s personal bank account at Coutts in 2019 on the grounds, Turk told Isbilen, that the duke helped obtain a Turkish passport for her.
It was paid nine days after Mr Turk won an award at Pitch@Palace – the Dragons’ Den-style forum bringing entrepreneurs and investors together, that Andrew had conceived. According to a senior source, Turk did ‘an appalling pitch’, yet his ‘digital bank’ idea got backing. ‘I thought, “How did he get through?” It was nuts.’
Princess Beatrice pictured with her husband, Edoardo Mapelli
Andrew’s office described the £750,000 as ‘a gift for the cost of the wedding or a gift to Princess Beatrice’ (pictured, above, with husband, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi). The money was repaid but a further £350,000 was reportedly paid to Andrew via a company called Alphabet Capital under the reference ‘TK Wedding’.
TK are the initials of Tarek Kaituni, the Libyan gun smuggler who had brokered meetings between Andrew and Colonel Gaddafi.
The court papers stated that the Duchess of York received at least £225,000 from the Alphabet account. A payment of £10,000 was also made by Alphabet Capital to Princess Eugenie. When Mrs Isbilen’s lawyer wrote to the duke, ‘he declined to respond to questions or give any account of his relationship with Mr Turk’.
Pitch@Palace gave Andrew the chance to network with useful business contacts. Thanks to the organisation he made at least 30 trips, many to countries with questionable records on corruption and human rights, such as Bahrain, China, Qatar. Many trips were piggy-backed on ‘official’ work for the government, and therefore paid for by the taxpayer.
In June 2016, for example, taxpayers paid almost £22,000 for a trip to Malaysia on Foreign Office business, where he stayed on for two days for lunches with ‘business leaders’. Andrew’s aides briefed that he had helped 1,042 entrepreneurs from 64 countries, created 6,323 jobs and generated more than £1.3 billion in ‘economic activity’.
However, the figures were calculated by combining the entire turnover and workforce of every firm to have ever taken part at a Pitch@Palace event, many of which would have succeeded without its help.
Was Andrew victim of Russian honey trap
In December last year, a failed appeal to the UK Special Immigration Appeals Commission revealed that a former business adviser to Prince Andrew had been banned from Britain on national security grounds in 2023.
Identified only as H6, the 50-year-old man, who was sufficiently close to have been invited to Andrew’s 60th birthday party and had been to Buckingham Palace, St James’s Palace and Windsor Castle, had been authorised to act on the duke’s behalf to seek investors in China.
It was now disclosed that he was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and had been working for its United Front Work Department, which gathers intelligence. The man had been authorised by Andrew to set up an international financial initiative known as the Eurasia Fund to engage with potential partners and investors in China.
Court papers also revealed that China’s ambassador to London regarded Andrew as a ‘valuable communication channel’.
Judge Charles Bourne said in his ruling that H6 had ‘won an unusual degree of trust from a senior member of the royal family who was prepared to enter into business activities with him. It is obvious that the pressures on the duke could make him vulnerable to the misuse of that sort of influence.’
A document found on the alleged spy’s phone said Andrew was in a ‘desperate situation and will grab on to anything’.
H6 was quickly revealed as Chris Yang (Yang Tengbo), who had been responsible for setting up Pitch@Palace in China. This raised various concerns:
- What secrets or contacts that Andrew had been privy to had been passed on to Chinese authorities?
- Had Chinese investors obtained exclusive access to cutting-edge start-ups involved in aerospace, energy technology and genetics testing?
- Had Andrew been monetising Pitch@Palace, started as a not-for-profit, for his own personal enrichment, and had trips to China, paid for by the taxpayer, supported these earnings? The prince’s office said that on government advice he had ‘ceased all contact with the individual after concerns were raised’. It was reported that MI5 were investigating the Chinese monies paid to Pitch.
Yang Tengbo was not the first alleged international spy Andrew had contact with. ‘It’s been going on for years,’ according to ‘Alana’, a long-time associate of the duke. She said he had no idea how he was being set up, with spies inveigling their way into his circle as wealthy businessmen, most notably a tall, stunning blonde, who had dyed her hair red, part of a Russian spy ring operating in Britain.
She had seduced him in the penthouse of a Knightsbridge hotel, loaned him £25,000 interest-free to pay for one of his daughter’s trip to Switzerland and bought him a brand-new MacBook Pro that had been bugged with an electronic eavesdropping device so she got access to everything he was up to.
