Andrew Mountbatten Windsor made £15 million by selling a property he had neither bought nor paid rent on, courtesy of an opaque trust structure created by the late Queen and today administered by the King.
He was able to keep the proceeds of the sale of Sunninghill Park to a Kazakh billionaire even though it had initially been owned by the Crown Estate for the benefit of the taxpayer.
Andrew made the profit on the Windsor property after his move to nearby Royal Lodge, which became his official residence in 2004.
The sale funded the £7.5 million refurbishment of the lodge, in which he lived rent-free until last week when Charles announced his lease would be terminated. It also helps explain how he has funded his lifestyle despite enjoying little income beyond his modest naval pension.
Details of how he initially came to acquire the site have not been disclosed until now.
It can be revealed that in May 1987, Queen Elizabeth created a company, Tyrolese (83) Ltd, named after a region of Austria and Italy where royals have skied for almost a century. That July, the Queen’s representatives changed its constitution enabling the company to “acquire, hold and deal with property”, create “trusts of every description”, and “act as trustee for any person”.
Queen Elizabeth with Sarah Ferguson and Andrew at the Royal Windsor Horse Show in 1987
GEORGES DE KEERLE/GETTY
This meant that the company could hold assets on behalf of the Queen’s family hidden from public view. It also meant the company could remain “dormant” — sparing it from having to publish annual accounts — while overseeing large investments.
That same month, Tyrolese bought the leasehold for Sunninghill Park, a plot of residential land of about six acres near Windsor Castle, for £100,000. According to previously undisclosed Land Registry documents, the rent was £100 a year.
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Tyrolese bought the property from the Crown Estate, which, though technically owned by the monarchy, was legally bound to act independently and make investment decisions for the ultimate benefit of the public.
The Crown Estate Act 1961 meant it could not sell land and properties “except for the best consideration in money or money’s worth which in their opinion can be reasonably obtained”. There is no evidence the Crown Estate held an auction or invited other parties to submit bids for Sunninghill Park.
Shortly after the sale, it was announced that the recently married Andrew and Sarah Ferguson would move into a new 12-bedroom property to be built on the site. A Buckingham Palace spokesman described it as a “wedding gift”.
Sarah and Andrew on their wedding day in 1986
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The couple on the building site at Sunninghill Park in 1990
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The couple moved in in 1990 and lived there for more than a decade, during which Tyrolese remained responsible for paying annual rent of £100.
In 2002, the Queen Mother died, leaving Royal Lodge — her 30-room palace — vacant. Queen Elizabeth immediately resolved to give that property to Andrew and Ferguson, who were divorced but still living together, believing the residence was more in keeping with the status enjoyed by her second, favourite son.
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Before the move, the Queen also resolved to give Sunninghill to Andrew so that he could sell the property to a private bidder and use the proceeds to fund the renovation of Royal Lodge.
In August 2003, the Crown Estate transferred the freehold to a trust — the Sunninghill Park Settlement — administered by Mark Bridges, the Queen’s solicitor, and Sir Alan Reid, who, as keeper of the privy purse, managed the finances of the royal household. The sale price was just £12,265.
Andrew began soliciting bids for Sunninghill, whose brown brick façade had been mockingly likened to a Tesco superstore, but attracted limited interest.
In the summer of 2007, however, he received an offer of £15 million from Timur Kulibayev, the billionaire son-in-law of Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was then president of Kazakhstan. Andrew had links to the country as an international trade envoy and later as a private fixer to companies investing there.
Timur Kulibayev
MUKHTAR KHOLDORBEKOV/REUTERS
Kulibayev used a network of offshore trusts to buy the property, which he did for £3 million more than the formal asking price and potentially far more than its true value. At the time, an independent chartered surveyor valued the estate, which was “tired and neglected”, to be worth as little as £6.4 million.
After the sale, Buckingham Palace sought to conceal the identity of the buyer. It refused to address questions about the tax implications of the sale between two trusts, describing it as a “private sale”. MPs on the Commons public accounts committee have already submitted questions to the Crown Estate about the leasehold arrangement that entitled Andrew to live at Royal Lodge rent-free.
The committee may also press the estate on how Andrew was able to benefit so handsomely from the Sunninghill sale and whether the Crown Estate fulfilled its legal duty to deliver value for money.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the committee chairman, said MPs would “continue to consider any relevant information which may provide a reasonable basis for further scrutiny”.
In the years since the sale, Tyrolese (83) — since renamed Flitcham Nominees — has continued to exist as a dormant company.
In March 2023, shortly before Charles’s coronation, the keeper of the privy purse resigned as the company’s registered person of significant control. That entry now reads: “His Most Gracious Majesty King Charles III.”
A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said that, since Charles’s coronation, the company has been “put back into use but has not since then, and does not, act as a trustee or hold any assets on behalf of Andrew Mounbatten Windsor, Sarah Ferguson or their children”. In Companies House filings, Flitcham Nominees lists its purpose as a “non-trading company”.
Tyrolese (83) was one of a number of listings — all bearing the name of the region — set up by Farrer & Co, solicitors to the royals, in the 1980s and 1990s. Andrew was previously the beneficiary of Tyrolese (697), which was dissolved in 2022, while his daughter, Beatrice, was a beneficiary of Tyrolese (713), which was dissolved the previous year.
Prince William and Prince Harry are the joint beneficiaries of Tyrolese (743), which they use to share the proceeds of money given to a foundation named after their late mother.
Like the buyer of Sunninghill, none of the companies have ever published detailed information about their activities and benefit from “dormant” status. The royals have never formally acknowledged their existence on the record.
Their opaqueness — and the fact that they sit outside the Crown Estate and the duchies owned by the King and by Prince William — makes it impossible for the public to scrutinise them.
The Crown Estate was asked if the transactions represented value for money and sound financial principles. It declined to comment.