Andrew oligarch £15m mansion sale linked to bribery scheme

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor received millions of pounds from an oligarch using funds from a firm implicated in criminal corruption, a BBC investigation has found.

Kazakh billionaire Timur Kulibayev has told the BBC through his lawyers that he used a loan from a company called Enviro Pacific Investments to help him buy Andrew's former mansion.

Prosecutors in Italy concluded that the firm had received cash from a bribery scheme in 2007.

Weeks after the last of these payments was made, the oligarch bought Sunninghill Park in Berkshire from the then prince for £15m - with the help of funds from Enviro Pacific.

Kulibayev is the son-in-law of Kazakhstan's then-president and was one of the most influential officials in the central Asian country's oil and gas industry. The BBC has also learned that, in another case, an Italian businessman pleaded guilty to bribing the oligarch.

Kulibayev's lawyers told us he has never engaged in bribery or corruption, and the funds used to acquire Sunninghill Park were entirely legitimate.
The revelations raise questions about whether the then-prince may have inadvertently benefited from the proceeds of crime and whether he and his advisers conducted the proper checks required by law to avoid this.

Money laundering expert Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Finance and Security, said the deal had "blatant red flags" which should have prompted detailed checks to ensure it was not "helping to launder the proceeds of corruption".

Kulibayev reportedly paid £3m more than the asking price and an estimated £7m more than the property's market value.

The former prince did not respond to the BBC's requests for comment. He told the Daily Telegraph in 2009, after criticism of the deal: "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."

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