[quote Myee]A piece about the Sunningdale/South York house.
www.theguardian.com/money/2009/mar/01/sunninghill-park-prince-andrew[/quote]
See also from the Sunday Times:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kazakh-tycoons-secret-deal-on-prince-andrews-house-bsm5dbr6ch2
Sunninghill Park is a sorry shadow of the house it used to be when Prince Andrew and his family called it home.
Unoccupied and unloved, its unkempt appearance is perhaps all the more surprising given that the person who bought it can now be revealed as one of the richest men in his mineral-rich homeland of Kazakhstan.
Timur Kulibayev, the son-in-law of the Kazakh president and worth an estimated £1.7 billion in 2008, admitted this weekend that he is the owner of the Ascot mansion. He bought it from Andrew for £3m above the asking price, even though there were no other bidders.
His admission comes after nearly three years of secrecy over the building’s ownership. Kulibayev only acknowledged his role after The Sunday Times painstakingly unravelled the chain of offshore companies he had used to obscure the 2007 purchase.
Insiders say Kulibayev’s decision to pay over the odds for Sunninghill may have been an attempt to win Andrew’s friendship.
Last night fresh questions were being raised over Andrew’s judgment in accepting the money from a businessman now subject to claims of financial impropriety in his homeland.
Ian Davidson, a Labour member of the Commons public accounts committee, questioned whether the prince was “blinded by the opportunity to make a windfall profit”.
Possibly the work he does in Kazakhstan is to the benefit of Britain,” said Davidson. “But he has got to avoid giving the impression that he is for sale or at least for rent.”
Kulibayev, 43, who is married to Dinara, daughter of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, made his fortune from natural resources in Kazakhstan, which has some of the world’s richest gas and mineral reserves.
However, he has frequently been criticised for removing wealth from his homeland, and is currently embroiled in a row involving tit-for-tat corruption allegations with a group of exiled opponents in Britain. Members of his family have also been subject to an abortive investigation in Liechtenstein into money laundering.
Kulibayev has left the 12-bedroom Sunninghill, a wedding present from the Queen to the Duke and Duchess of York, unoccupied, and it has fallen into decay — the latest stage in a sometimes ill-starred history.
The house’s style was widely derided as “supermarket”. Andrew and Sarah were divorced in 1996, but continued to live at Sunninghill with their children Beatrice and Eugenie. The duke eventually moved out in 2004, two years after the house had been put up for sale.
It languished on the market, valued at £12m, until it was suddenly bought in 2007. The high price came even though there were no other bidders.
The buyer was named in the Land Registry as Unity Assets Corporation, based in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Although The Sunday Times in 2008 identified Kulibayev as the probable buyer, this could not be established for certain.
Contracts on Sunninghill were exchanged in June 2007 and the deal was completed in September in a sale signed off by Mark Bridges, a solicitor at Farrer, the firm which represents the Queen, and by Sir Alan Reid, the monarch’s keeper of the privy purse.
Leaked corporate documents from the BVI and from Kazakhstan, seen by The Sunday Times, unravel the link from Unity to Kulibayev. Share registers show Unity is owned by Merix International Ventures. Merix is owned in turn by Kipros Ltd, also registered in the BVI.
At the time of the purchase, Kipros was owned by Kipros limited liability partnership, registered in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan. Kazakh registration documents from 2007 show Kulibayev as controlling the partnership, and in 2008 its sole share in Kipros Ltd was transferred to him personally.
Further documents show Sunninghill was just one of Kulibayev’s British purchases. Also in 2007, he paid a total of £44.4m for four adjoining houses in Upper Grosvenor Street and Reeves Mews in Mayfair. They were bought in the names of Merix, Vitala and Lynn, all Kulibayev companies.
At the time, both Kulibayev and the palace refused to discuss the Sunninghill purchase. As recently as last Friday morning, Kulibayev denied he was the owner of the properties.
“I am not the owner and I don’t know why you are asking me these questions,” he said to a reporter. However, when he was then read the names of the BVI companies he declined to comment further, referring questions to “my people”.
His London solicitors Magwells later answered on his behalf. Their response said: “Sunninghill was purchased by and is still owned by companies that are legally owned by Mr Kulibayev.” The lawyers also confirmed that the London properties were owned by Kulibayev’s companies.
A source close to the negotiations suggested that the inflated price was prompted by Kulibayev’s hope of doing the prince a favour and so buying a sense of obligation from him.