£3m mystery of Andrew’s house sale

While many in Britain are having to drastically reduce the prices of their homes in order to secure a sale, Prince Andrew has bucked the trend, selling his former marital home, Sunninghill Park in Berkshire - a wedding gift from the Queen to Andrew and his then wife Sarah, Duchess of York - for £15m, when the upper guide price was only £12m.

The buyer is a 29-year-old Kazakh tycoon called Kenes Rakishev, who heads up Sat&Co, an energy conglomerate in Kazakhstan, and is believed to have business links with the Prince. Rakishev bought the 12-bedroomed house with his father-in-law, a former Kazakh prime minister.

But it is a mystery why he spent £3m over the guide price - especially when there were no other bidders for the house and it had been on the market for five years.

It is understood that the Prince met Rakishev and his father-in-law while on a trip to Kazakhstan, a country he has visited on official business in his
role as roving ambassador for British trade three times since 2003, although he is said to have been to the country more frequently on private business.

Artur Krivov, who was the managing director of the UK arm of Rakishev's conglomerate until eight months ago, confirmed a large discrepancy between the asking price and the amount paid. "I personally was really surprised because there were much better [houses] at that price," he told the Sunday Times. "But I guess there were other issues here than just price and the place."

A spokesman for the Prince, who said he was in Kazakhstan this weekend on a privately funded "holiday", said: "The sale of Sunninghill Park was a
straight commercial transaction. There were no side deals and absolutely no arrangement for the Duke of York to benefit otherwise or to commit to any other commercial arrangement. Any suggestion otherwise is completely false."

The entire £15m was paid to the trustees who manage the property on Andrew's behalf. The Prince is the sole beneficiary of the trust: his ex-wife relinquished any claim on the property as part of their divorce.