No surprise the royals don’t need Andrew and Fergie round for Christmas… Just take a look at the corporate the disgraced Duke of York retains, says ANDREW LOWNIE

As Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson spend a desultory Christmas alone at the Royal Lodge, while more than 40 members of the Royal Family celebrate 125 miles away in Sandringham, they may well feel a pang of regret over the Duke’s associations. 

However, the only real surprise is that Andrew’s network of shady operators, and indeed convicted criminals, has not seen him excluded from the family festivities until now.  

The news that a close adviser to Prince Andrew, Yang Tengbo, is allegedly a Chinese spy has again reminded the world of how probably the most naïve and greedy member of the Royal Family has an unfortunate range of friends and business contacts.

Tengbo, who denies the accusations, has known the duke for over a decade, spearheaded the Chinese operations of Pitch@Palace, a Dragons Den initiative to find the entrepreneurs of the future. 

He was tasked with finding Chinese investors for the Eurasia Fund, a company of the prince’s which was headed by an old friend Dominic Hampshire.

Andrew has long been keen to break into the lucrative Chinese market and during his time as Special Representative for Trade and Investment ( 2001-2011), which was funded by the taxpayer, he built up some useful contacts and used his trips to help various business associates, most notably David Rowland.

Rowland and his son, Jonathan, who described themselves as Andrew’s financial advisers, accompanied him on several of his British trade trips including to the Middle East and China. 

Ahead of a 2010 visit to China Andrew sent the proposed programme to Jonathan asking ‘Which events do you need to be at?’ The Rowlands were even able to add individuals that they were keen to meet to the programme. The trip cost the British taxpayer over £30,000.

The Rowlands, said to have been passed secret diplomatic cables by Andrew and able to meet the British ambassador, were able to target potential clients off the back of the taxpayer-funded trade mission for their own private bank. 

On one trip to Saudi Arabia, Andrew lobbied the King of Bahrain on behalf of the Rowlands who planned to start a Middle Eastern banking operation, one which e-mails show Andrew was due to have a stake.

It is known than Andrew had a 40% share in a firm based in the British Virgin Islands called Inverness Asset Management, targeting super rich investors, linked to the Rowlands. 

In short, the Duke leveraged his position as Britain’s trade envoy to act as a facilitator for the Rowlands, potentially for his own financial gain.

In return Rowland paid a £1. 5 million loan taken out by Andrew, settled some of Sarah Ferguson’s debts, provided Andrew with the use of their private jet and was a guest at Balmoral and Princess Eugenie’s wedding.

Rowland has been in the news recently after he had tried to become Kim Jong Un’s private banker – the key fixer was Dr Johnny Hon who has long financed the Duchess of York -, was fined £10 million after being involved in a global plot to ruin the oil-rich state of Qatar and then lost his bank’s licence was revoked. 

Rowland also accompanied Andrew on at least one trip to see Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, a visit which Buckingham Palace went to great lengths to conceal. 

Presumably it was on one of these trips that he met the dictator’s son-in-law Saif Al Islam Gaddafi who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, and was sentenced to death by a Libyan court in 2015.

Prior to this, he was hosted by Andrew at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. 

Also accompanying Andrew on the Libya trip was Tarek Kaituni, a convicted gun smuggler, who bragged to undercover reporters that he could arrange for Andrew to appear at the launch of a new golf resort in Libya in return for a fee. 

Kaituni was invited to Princess Beatrice’s 21st birthday party in 2009 where he gave her a £20,000 diamond pendant and attended the wedding of Princess Eugenie.

Kaituni is linked to Selman Turk, whose company won a People’s Choice Award at Pitch@Palace and who was accused of stealing over £40 million from Nebahat Evyap Isbilen, 77, after she hired him to help transfer her assets out of Turkey. 

The High Court case revealed that Turk had paid Andrew , his ex-wife and his daughter Eugenie £1.4 million. The York’s were unable to explain why they had received the payment beyond suggestions that part of it had been a wedding present and to fund a birthday party.

Andrew continually confused his personal financial interests with his role as trade ambassador. It was well-known that he tried during the trade trips to try and flog his old house, Sunninghill, which had been given as a wedding present by the Queen. 

Eventually it was bought by Timur Kulibayev, the billionaire son-in-law of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazakhstan, who was the only bidder.

Another close friend was Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan , a country where elections were rigged, journalists imprisoned, opposition politicians tortured and Aliyev, the son of a former KGB major general, changed the constitution so he could be re-elected unlimited times and make his wife vice-president. 

The Rowlands accompanied Andrew to the country twice in 2008 leading to $5 million invested in a fund controlled by the Rowlands.

Indeed, his links to dubious regimes were constantly a source of controversy during his role as a trade envoy.  

Andrew hosted a business lunch for ousted the son-in-law of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the ousted Tunisian dictator, just three months before the regime was toppled.

The Prince, acting in his capacity as Britain’s special trade representative,was said to have hosted Sakher el-Materi, then 29, at a Buckingham Palace lunch, attended by dozens of executives from British companies hoping to forge lucrative business opportunities in Tunisia.

After the regime fel, el-Materi fled the country to escape investigation for money laundering and sought political asylum in the Seychelles. 

A court in Tunisia convicted him in absentia and sentenced him to 16 years in prison and imposed a fine for corruption and property fraud. 

Most of the controversies surrounding Andrew have to date revolved around his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and the claims made by Virginia Giuffre. 

Epstein, 66, killed himself in prison in 2019 while Maxwell remains locked up at FCI Tallahassee in Florida, while serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking.

However, she is by no means the only one of Andrew’s friends languishing behind bars. 

In 2023, Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygard, 83, was convicted on four counts of sexual assault, after a court found he used his ‘status’ to attack five women aged 16 to 28 in a series of incidents from the late 1980s to 2005.

Nygard is serving an 11-year sentence and still faces separate sexual assault and sex trafficking charges. 

The prince and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson stayed at Nygard Cay, near Nassau, with daughters Beatrice and Eugenie in 2000, after the designer had agreed out-of-court settlements with three employees who accused him of sexual harassment.

The real scandal has however been how he has leveraged his royal position for personal financial gain. That story is only just emerging and still has a long way to go.

Andrew Lownie’s Entitled: The Controversial Lives of the Duke and Duchess of York will be published next year