No wonder the royals don’t want Andrew and Fergie around for Christmas… Just look at the company the disgraced Duke of York keeps, says ANDREW LOWNIE

As Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson spend a tempestuous Christmas alone at the Royal Lodge, while more than 40 members of the royal family celebrate 120 miles away at Sandringham, they may feel a sense of regret over the Duke’s dealings .

The only real surprise, though, is that Andrew’s network of shady operators, and even convicted criminals, hasn’t banned him from the family celebrations so far.

News that a close adviser to Prince Andrew, Yang Tengbo, is allegedly a Chinese spy has once again reminded the world that probably the most naive and greedy member of the royal family has an unfortunate string of friends and business contacts.

Tengbo, who denies the allegations, has known the duke for more than a decade and led 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 owned by the prince and run by long-time friend Dominic Hampshire.

Andrew has long been keen to break into the lucrative Chinese market and during his time as taxpayer-funded Special Representative for Trade and Investment (2001-2011), he built a number of useful contacts and used his travels to help companies. employees, especially David Rowland.

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

Prior to a visit to China in 2010, Andrew sent the proposed program to Jonathan with the question “What events should you attend?” The Rowlands were even able to add people they wanted to meet to the program. The trip cost the British taxpayer more than £30,000.

The Rowlands, who allegedly received secret diplomatic cables from Andrew and were able to meet the British ambassador, were able to target potential clients outside the taxpayer-funded trade mission for their own private bank.

During a trip to Saudi Arabia, Andrew lobbied the King of Bahrain on behalf of the Rowlands, who were planning to launch a banking operation in the Middle East, in which emails show Andrew would have a stake.

It is known that Andrew had a 40% stake in a company based in the British Virgin Islands called Inverness Asset Management, aimed at super-rich investors, connected to the Rowlands.

In short, the Duke took advantage of his position as British trade envoy to act as a facilitator for the Rowlands, possibly for his own financial gain.

In return, Rowland paid £1. A 5 million loan that Andrew took out paid off 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 recently been in the news after trying to become Kim Jong Un’s private banker – the main fixer was Dr. Johnny Hon who has long bankrolled the Duchess of York – and was fined £10 million after being involved in a global plot to ruin the Duchess of York. the oil-rich state of Qatar and lost it when its banking license was revoked.

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

It is believed that during one of these trips 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.

Before that, he was received by Andrew at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.

Andrew was also accompanied on the trip to Libya by Tarek Kaituni, a convicted arms 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 Princess Eugenie’s wedding.

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

The High Court case found 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 suggesting that some of it had been a wedding gift and to fund a birthday party.

Andrew continually confused his personal financial interests with his role as a trade ambassador. It was known that during the trading voyages he attempted to flog his old home, Sunninghill, which had been given as a wedding present by the Queen.

Ultimately, it was bought by Timur Kulibayev, the billionaire son of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, who was the sole bidder.

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

The Rowlands accompanied Andrew to the country twice in 2008, leading to a $5 million investment in a fund managed by the Rowlands.

His ties to questionable regimes were a constant source of controversy during his role as trade envoy.

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

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

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

A court in Tunisia convicted him in absentia, sentencing him to 16 years in prison and imposing a fine for corruption and property fraud.

Most of Andrew’s controversy to date has revolved around his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Giuffre’s claims.

Epstein, 66, committed suicide in prison in 2019, while Maxwell remains incarcerated at FCI Tallahassee in Florida while serving a 20-year sentence for child sex trafficking.

However, she is certainly not the only one of Andrew’s friends to languish behind bars.

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

Nygard is serving an 11-year prison sentence and continues to face separate charges of sexual assault and sex trafficking.

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

The real scandal, however, is the way he has abused his royal position for personal financial gain. That story is only just emerging and 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