‘If Prince Andrew thinks he’s back in the Palace fold, he’s delusional’
Duke engulfed in another scandal involving an ‘unsavoury friend’ yet thinks he is the new Philip, while aides are at their wits’ end.
Carefully escorting the Queen to her front-row seat at Westminster Abbey in front of the world’s cameras last week, the Duke of York must have thought he had won the jackpot.
Less than a month after paying millions of pounds to Virginia Giuffre to settle a US lawsuit over allegations of sexual assault, Prince Andrew appeared once more to be the frail monarch’s favoured son at a thanksgiving service for the life of the Duke of Edinburgh.
Today (Sunday) any glow of satisfaction was rapidly wearing off as Andrew found himself at the centre of yet another scandal.
“The timing has not been good for him,” said a royal source. “On Tuesday, Mum gives her seal of approval: ‘I think you’re innocent, son. You’re with me.’ By this weekend, his unsavoury friends are coming out of the cupboard again. For that reason alone, I’m sure the duke regrets it.”
The “unsavoury friend” on this occasion is a former Goldman Sachs banker called Selman Turk, who has been accused in a High Court civil action of swindling an elderly Turkish millionairess out of a large swathe of her family fortune. Nebahat Isbilen, 77, claims that Turk, her former financial adviser, instructed her to transfer $1.3 million to the duke’s Coutts bank account in November 2019.
Isbilen says Turk, 35, told her the “gift” was inexplicably tied to “help” provided by Andrew in acquiring her a new passport as she fled political persecution in her native Turkey. Her husband, Ilhan, is a former MP who has been jailed over his alleged links to a coup attempt in 2015.
Court documents allege that Andrew, 62, later received up to $612,000 from a company linked to Turk called Alphabet Capital. Lawyers for Isbilen claim that money may also have been pilfered from their client’s accounts.
Although the duke eventually returned the $1.3 million gift, he has so far failed to explain why he received the cash in the first place and what it was for. Nor has he spelt out the nature of his relationship with Turk, a Turkish national who has lived in London for years. A spokeswoman for the duke declined to comment, citing legal proceedings.
Yesterday (Saturday) Andrew chose to use Instagram to muse on his time in the Royal Navy during the Falklands War, on the 40th anniversary of the Argentine invasion of the islands. “99 per cent boredom, training and routine and that horrendous 1 per cent of sheer terror as missiles and bombs and shells were thrown around,” he wrote.
Turk, who is subject to a worldwide asset-freezing order, denies any wrongdoing. Isbilen claims the money she gave Andrew may be related to an award presented to Turk by the duke nine days earlier at St James’s Palace as part of a Dragons’ Den-style competition for budding entrepreneurs called Pitch@Palace.
Turk’s grand idea was to start a “digital bank” called Heyman, which was later wound up with debts of at least $38,000.
Other court papers suggest the $1.3 million payment to Andrew was actually a gift towards the wedding of Andrew’s elder daughter, Princess Beatrice, 33, the following summer.
The prince’s ex-wife, Sarah, Duchess of York, also appears to have benefited from Turk’s generosity. She received $393,000 from Alphabet Capital in August 2019, according to the High Court case. Friends say the sum was owed to the duchess by a Las Vegas solar power company, Pegasus, for whom she had worked as a brand ambassador that year.
When the company was unable to pay her the money in one instalment, Turk apparently agreed to step in and took on the debt. Sarah, 62, was introduced to him by her ex-husband. Her spokesman said: “The duchess was completely unaware of the allegations that have since emerged against Mr Turk. She is naturally concerned by what has been alleged against him.”
Andrew’s younger daughter, Princess Eugenie, 32, also received two payments worth just over $44,000 from Turk and Alphabet Capital in October 2019. She claims the money - labelled in part “Birthday gift” - was deposited in her bank account after a “longstanding family friend” offered to help pay for a surprise 60th birthday party for her mother. The money was immediately passed on to the organisers of the event.
“I know neither Mrs Isbilen nor Mr Turk,” Eugenie said in a statement. The princess’s lawyers are now assisting Isbilen’s legal team with their inquiries.
In total the Yorks have allegedly received at least $2.37 million at the behest of Turk.
It is not the first time the family has been dragged into a scandal involving Andrew. In 2010, two years after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted of procuring a child for prostitution in Florida, the duke asked the billionaire US financier to help pay off the duchess’s personal debts. He gave Sarah $26,000. She later claimed her judgment had been “clouded” by her desperate financial situation.
Other benefactors include David Rowland, a Tory donor who allegedly paid off a $2.64 million bank loan for the duke and some of the duchess’s debts. Unlike working royals, the Yorks do not receive public funding from the sovereign grant.
If the appearance at Westminster Abbey was Andrew’s attempt at a dress rehearsal for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June, it landed badly. Royal family members and Palace aides said it was right for the duke to attend, but not to grandstand. They insisted he would not have carte blanche as the Queen’s plus one: “Everyone expected to see him, but didn’t expect to see him play front and centre,” a royal aide said. “Where there are official events with family attending in an official capacity, different rules will apply.”
There is exasperation across the royal households. His behaviour “cast a shadow over the service which nobody wanted, and hopefully a certain someone [Andrew] has noticed that”, a senior royal source said. Before the service Andrew was urged not to accompany the Queen. Advisers predicted it would bring “turbulence” to a poignant occasion.
“Nobody thought how that would play out optically was going to be a good idea,” the source said. “The point had been made, but if there’s one person in the family who never listens to advice ...
“He might have hoped it would become mission creep to being more visible, but that’s not the will of everybody else. He can’t just turn up to things and play an unexpected role. The family track record shows there’s tolerance but there’s not a blind eye. Most of the family are not as deaf to the issue created as the Duke of York might be.”
A guest at Balmoral, the Queen’s Scottish retreat, last summer said Andrew had “completely assumed the role of the Duke of Edinburgh” and was glued to her side behind closed doors.
A friend of the duke said that, regardless of his settlement with Giuffre, which excluded any admission of liability, “If you’re of the belief that you’ve done nothing wrong and been treated unfairly, then should you be excluded for ever?”
A Palace source confirmed the unanimous view of the most senior courtiers: “The duke is delusional if he thinks what happened on Tuesday means he has any chance of resuming a public role. He doesn’t.”
The royal family are now on the alert to prevent another Andrew ambush. Prince Charles, who has made it clear that “a way back for the duke is demonstrably not possible”, is on his guard, as he was after Prince Philip’s death last April. Then, Andrew was “gunning to be in front of a camera asap”, according to a source close to Charles, prompting the heir to the throne to record an impromptu tribute to his “dear papa” the day after his death, ensuring Andrew did not get there first.
Charles, William and other family members will accompany the Queen to her future engagements and the public jubilee events she hopes to attend. Andrew is likely to attend some jubilee celebrations in a private capacity, but he will not be front row again.
Sources close to Charles said that while he did not think it was a good idea for Andrew to accompany the Queen, “if that is Her Majesty’s wish, the Prince of Wales is not in the business of having a fight with his mother”.
The Times
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