Andrew was paid millions by oligarch with funds from firm linked to bribery scheme

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor acquired thousands and thousands of kilos from an oligarch utilizing funds from a agency implicated in felony corruption, a BBC investigation has discovered.

Kazakh billionaire Timur Kulibayev has advised the BBC by means of his legal professionals that he used a mortgage from an organization known as Enviro Pacific Investments to assist him purchase Andrew’s former mansion.

Prosecutors in Italy concluded that the agency had acquired money from a bribery scheme in 2007.

Weeks after the final of those funds was made, the oligarch purchased Sunninghill Park in Berkshire from the then prince for £15m – with the assistance of funds from Enviro Pacific.

Kulibayev is the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s then-president and was one of the crucial influential officers within the central Asian nation’s oil and fuel business. The BBC has additionally discovered that, in one other case, an Italian businessman pleaded responsible to bribing the oligarch.

Kulibayev’s legal professionals advised us he has by no means engaged in bribery or corruption, and the funds used to accumulate Sunninghill Park had been fully authentic.

The revelations elevate questions on whether or not the then-prince might have inadvertently benefited from the proceeds of crime and whether or not he and his advisers performed the right checks required by regulation to keep away from this.

Cash laundering knowledgeable Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Finance and Safety, stated the deal had “blatant pink flags” which ought to have prompted detailed checks to make sure it was not “serving to to launder the proceeds of corruption”.

Kulibayev reportedly paid £3m greater than the asking value and an estimated £7m greater than the property’s market worth.

The previous prince didn’t reply to the BBC’s requests for remark. He advised the Each day Telegraph in 2009, after criticism of the deal: “It isn’t my enterprise, the second the value is paid. If that’s the supply, I am not going to look a present horse within the mouth and counsel they’ve overpaid me.”

Sunninghill Park was given to Andrew by the Queen as a marriage reward in 1986. A contemporary two-storey red-brick mansion, the 12-bedroom home, with 12 matching loos and 6 reception rooms, was mocked for its resemblance to a Tesco superstore.

After it was first put in the marketplace in 2001 and failed to draw gives, Andrew grew to become personally concerned. The previous prince used the chance of an official go to to Bahrain because the UK’s commerce envoy in 2003 to personally attempt to promote the property to Gulf royals, based on Simon Wilson, who was deputy ambassador on the time.

However a purchaser finally emerged by means of the then prince’s connections to a unique nation: Kazakhstan. In 2002, Andrew had grow to be patron of the British-Kazakh Society collectively with the nation’s autocratic president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Andrew visited the nation in 2006 and, later that yr, Nazarbayev met the then Queen at Buckingham Palace.

In 2007, a suggestion for Sunninghill Park got here from Timur Kulibayev, Nazarbayev’s son-in-law.

On the time, he had a fortune estimated at greater than £1bn and a key function operating the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, Samruk-Kaznya, which owns a lot of the state’s oil and fuel business.

Andrew had reportedly been launched to Kulibayev by Kazakh businesswoman and socialite Goga Ashkenazi, who has two kids from an affair with the oligarch. She later described the prince as a detailed pal, however now says she has not had any dealings with him for about 15 years.

Andrew and Ashkenazi had been photographed in June 2007 attending Women Day at Ascot with the Queen. In the identical month, contracts had been exchanged for the acquisition of Sunninghill. Kulibayev used an offshore firm he owned, Unity Belongings Company, to purchase the mansion. The Royal Household’s solicitors, Farrer & Co, acted for the vendor.

The transaction was accomplished in September that yr. The identical month, royal data present, British taxpayers picked up a invoice for £57,000 for a chartered flight for the previous prince to go to Kazakhstan on official enterprise as commerce envoy.

On the time of the sale, the UK authorities was elevating considerations about Kazakhstan. Then-Europe Minister Geoff Hoon advised MPs in April 2007 that “allegations of systematic corruption” within the nation had been “rife”.

Regardless of these considerations – in addition to Andrew’s official function as commerce envoy and his place then as fourth-in-line to the throne – the id of the client was not disclosed by both of the events, or by Buckingham Palace.

In 2007, there was no requirement to determine the house owners of offshore firms which purchased UK property, and Kulibayev was solely named by the media three years later.

Questions had been raised in regards to the deal’s hyperlinks to corruption in 2012, when media reviews stated Italian prosecutors had been investigating allegations involving Kulibayev.

The allegations included the likelihood that bribes may need been used to fund the acquisition of Sunninghill Park by means of Enviro Pacific Investments – the corporate which has now been confirmed as partly funding the deal. These investigations didn’t result in any prices towards Kulibayev.

Nonetheless, the BBC has seen paperwork from a sequence of court docket circumstances in 2016 and 2017 which collectively present how Italian prosecutors concluded that Enviro Pacific Investments had acquired money from a bribery scheme.

These paperwork had been first obtained by L’Espresso journal throughout the Worldwide Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ Caspian Cabals project.

They counsel that Enviro Pacific Investments’ hyperlink to corruption was by means of one other firm known as Aventall. In a case in Monza, Italian oil government Agostino Bianchi pleaded responsible to paying bribes to Kulibayev and different Kazakh officers over profitable oil contracts, and Aventall was named as one of many firms used to channel bribes. Kulibayev was not charged.

Based on Bianchi’s plea settlement, Aventall was run by Massimo Guidotti, who was described because the “mediator” of corruption.

He had created a ranking system measuring the affect of Kazakh oligarchs, based on court docket paperwork in a associated case. In an electronic mail from 2009, he gave Kulibayev the utmost 5 stars. Questioned by prosecutors, Guidotti denied distributing bribes.

In a second case in Milan, prosecutors stated Aventall had made funds “of an allegedly corrupt nature” to Enviro Pacific Investments – the corporate which lent the cash for the Sunninghill buy.

They stated $6.5m (£3.27m) had been promised, however they might solely discover proof of $1.5m (£755,000) of funds. The final was in April 2007, lower than two months earlier than contracts had been exchanged for Sunninghill.

The prosecutors stated “open sources” confirmed that Enviro Pacific was linked to Kulibayev. However the Milan proceedings had been dismissed in January 2017 – partly as a result of prosecutors couldn’t hyperlink the funds to particular contracts or definitively determine the general public officers who acquired the funds.

Kulibayev’s legal professionals advised the BBC that he denied being bribed, had no involvement in awarding the contracts and has not been the topic of any investigation in Italy. They stated Kulibayev ”was not concerned in and had no data of any ‘corrupt scheme’ involving Mr Bianchi or Mr Guidotti”.

His legal professionals stated he has by no means owned or managed Enviro Pacific and that the corporate by no means held property on his behalf. When requested who owned it, they didn’t reply, citing confidentiality.

Nonetheless, the oligarch’s legal professionals confirmed to the BBC that their shopper “obtained a mortgage from Enviro Pacific in 2007 for industrial causes and on purely industrial phrases at a market price” to assist fund the acquisition of Sunninghill Park.

It means an organization alleged to be a part of a corruption scheme was additionally concerned within the cope with Andrew.

The oligarch’s legal professionals didn’t deny the reported £6m worth of the mortgage and stated Kulibayev had later repaid it, with curiosity.

They stated the funds used to buy Sunninghill had been fully authentic and that every one applicable due diligence would have been carried out on the time. Kulibayev paid £15m to make sure he was profitable in shopping for the property as there was a competing bidder, his legal professionals stated.

Sunninghill lay empty for years after Kulibayev’s buy and was finally demolished in 2016. A brand new, 14-bedroom mansion was finally constructed instead, nevertheless it too has by no means been occupied.

There is no such thing as a proof that the previous prince knew the supply of funds utilized by Kulibayev to pay for Sunninghill.

However there have been a number of options of the sale or “pink flags” that ought to have raised the alarm with legal professionals appearing for Andrew that not less than a few of the cash may stem from corruption.

These embody:

• The British authorities’s considerations about “systematic corruption in Kazakhstan” on the time
• Kulibayev’s place as a public official and son-in regulation to the then Kazakh president
• The usage of advanced offshore buildings involving a number of firms and mortgage agreements and not using a clear rationale for them
• The allegedly inflated value
• The dearth of transparency over the id of the purchaser

“No matter who you might be – royal, oligarch or billionaire – these appearing for you in any property transaction ought to be alert to the dangers, each authorized and reputational, inherent in offshore investments in UK property,” stated Keatinge, the cash laundering knowledgeable from the Centre for Finance and Safety.

He stated that since 2004, legal professionals have been required to conduct strict checks on the supply of funds, together with figuring out the proprietor of offshore firms shopping for property.

Margaret Hodge, the federal government’s anti-corruption champion, stated she was “totally shocked” by the BBC’s revelations, including that “proceeds of crime” might have been concerned “in what has already been a really controversial gross sales transaction”.

“These allegations must be correctly investigated by each Parliament and the suitable nationwide businesses. No person is above the regulation.”

Together with the previous prince, Buckingham Palace declined to remark.

The Royal Household’s solicitors, Farrer & Co, additionally declined to remark, citing shopper confidentiality. The client’s solicitor stated that every one required procedures had been undertaken at the moment and that the agency knew Kulibayev was the individual shopping for the property.

Since Nazarbayev stood down as president in 2019, Kazakhstan’s new authorities has begun pursuing a authorized case in Switzerland to attempt to get better thousands and thousands from people and corporations it accuses of corruption. The bribery scheme in Italy alleged to contain Kulibayev is a part of that authorized case, though the oligarch shouldn’t be among the many defendants.

Media reviews in early 2025 instructed Kulibayev was in negotiations to pay the Kazakhstan authorities $1bn (£741m) in reference to an investigation into wealth accrued throughout the presidency of his father-in-law.

The oligarch’s legal professionals say that his wealth was accrued by means of a long time of enterprise exercise, that he’s not beneath any investigation and that any suggestion he’s negotiating to pay compensation for illegally acquired property is inaccurate.