Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, has been taking a British tabloid beating over the controversial links he has cultivated in his role as a trade envoy. Touring the world for years drumming up business for the United Kingdom with assorted dictators and despots, the underemployed prince seems to roll with a motley crew, including some movers and shakers in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
Earlier this week Andrew managed to cling on to his envoy role despite his links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This furor seems not to have bothered the “Prince of Sleaze,” as he’s come to be known. Even as his position was under intense scrutiny on March 7, he was lobbying a member of Britain's parliament to promote business links with Azerbaijan, a country he has visited on numerous occasions. He is said to be a frequent dinner guest of President Ilham Aliyev.
On March 8, the prince's friend Goga Ashkenazi, a London-based Kazakh socialite, rushed to his defense.
“Andrew is not the villain he's being made out to be. I have seen him in action, including in my own country, Kazakhstan. He is a superb trade envoy, totally passionate and patriotic and doing the most amazing job for British business by opening doors behind the scenes—and for no personal gain,” she gushed to a London newspaper owned by Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev.
Ashkenazi, recall, is the former lover of Timur Kulibayev, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev's son-in-law, with whom she has a three-year old son. Last year, the Daily Mail reported that Kulibayev had paid Andrew some $5 million above the asking price for the prince's former home, Sunninghill.
In an unusual twist, Ashkenazi revealed a hitherto unseen altruistic vein in Kulibayev—it seems the plan all along was to turn the derelict mansion into a “charitable school for bright Kazakh children who can come here to do their A-levels and then try for the top British universities.”
Paul Bartlett is a journalist based in Almaty.
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