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Prince Andrew sells his house to Kazakh tycoon for £3m above asking price

Prince Andrew sells his house to Kazakh tycoon for £3m above asking price

By SIMON MCGEE
Last updated at 1:04 PM on 25th May 2008

Prince Andrew has sold his home for £15million to a tycoon from Kazakhstan with whom he is said to have had business dealings, it was claimed today. 

Energy tycoon Kenes Rakishev, 29, is said to have bought Sunninghill Park from the Prince for £3million more than its £12million estimated price tag. 

The Prince, who has a roving brief as ambassador for British trade, has had increasing involvement in the energy-rich country in recent years, brokering lucrative deals for UK firms.

 Prince Andrew and Goga Ashkenazi Ascot June 2007

Friendship: Prince Andrew with socialite Goga Ashkenazy at Ascot last summer

Sunninghill Park, in Ascot, a 12-bedroom house which was a wedding gift from the Queen to him and his bride Sarah Ferguson in 1986, was bought last September after sitting on the market for five years.

Land Registry documents show that the house – dubbed ‘Southyork’ after the Southfork home of the Ewing family in the TV series Dallas and derided as looking like a Tesco superstore when it was built –was purchased by British Virgin Islands-based company Unity Assets Corporation for £15million.

Mr Rakishev, head of the energy company Sat&Co, allegedly had several meetings with the Prince last year in London and Kazakhstan before buying the uninspiring red-brick property in Berkshire.

Mr Rakishev is reported to have bought the property through the offshore company with the help of his father-in-law, former Kazakh prime minister Imangali Tasmagambetov.

 Sunninghill Park, home of Prince Andrew

Southyork: Sunninghill Park has been sold for £15million

Sat&Co is an engineering and petrochemical conglomerate which has cashed in on its country’s oil reserves. It has grown massively since it was set up in 2000 and now commands a clutch of plants focusing on manufacturing and the development of petrochemical products.

Among the industrialist’s projects is a £2.5billion petrochemical plant in one of the oil-rich parts of western Kazakhstan. Prince Andrew, a patron of the British-Kazakh Society, was said to have been in Kazakhstan this weekend enjoying a private holiday.

He has also been the centre of speculation over his friendship with wealthy Kazakh socialite Goga Ashkenazy.

Last summer, Prince Andrew introduced Oxford-educated Ms Ashkenazy, chief executive of an oil and gas engineering company, to the Queen at Royal Ascot and earlier, in February 2007, he and Ms Ashkenazy were both guest speakers at a trade conference in Doha, Qatar. In December, they were seen dining together at a Chinese restaurant in Ascot.

Buckingham Palace was unavailable for comment last night.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1021770/Prince-Andrews-3m-house-sale-bonus-Kazakh-friend.html

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