Shut away at Wood Farm on the Sandringham Estate, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been twiddling his thumbs this week while his old stamping ground in the Middle East is torn apart by war.
But if the military conflict has provided a welcome distraction from his own headline-grabbing travails, then it has also cut off what might have been the last remaining escape route for the beleaguered former Duke of York.
He is currently under orders from his brother the King to stay indoors and has little to look forward to aside from the tea and Abernethy biscuits he is served upon waking each morning – not to mention the weekly Waitrose delivery van which he has been known to greet in his dressing gown.
Until the tumultuous events of the past seven days, 66-year-old Andrew was said to have been contemplating fleeing to either Bahrain or Abu Dhabi where he could still expect the warmest of welcomes and enjoy hugely lucrative financial connections.
Indeed, the Daily Mail has been told exclusively by a royal source that his early morning arrest last month came following an urgent tip-off to a senior courtier that ‘Andrew was getting his passport ready for a midnight flit’ and might be about to hoof it to the Middle East on a private jet, most likely to Bahrain which does not have a formal extradition treaty with the UK.
But with bombs and missiles falling across the region daily, any lingering hopes of reinventing himself among the Arab elite appear to have gone up in multiple puffs of smoke.
The US-Israel war against Iran also looks set to affect the movements of his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, who has her own ties in the region, and their daughters. Indeed, Beatrice, 37, and Eugenie, 35, have caused much eyebrow-raising in royal circles by pursuing their own business interests there and have made multiple jaunts to the region in recent years.
‘This is a huge blow to all of them,’ a close family friend told the Daily Mail. ‘There is no way any of them are going to go to the Gulf and Middle East region for a long time to come. It is far too dangerous for them, just as it is for everybody else.’
The Yorks have made multiple jaunts to the UAE in recent years. Pictured: Beatrice and Andrew in Abu Dhabi in 2008
Andrew has been known to greet Waitrose vans at Wood Farm on the Sandringham Estate in his dressing gown
All four have been enthusiastic travellers to the Gulf since the early 2000s and always receive the red carpet treatment.
The Yorks are also said to have a palatial home available to them in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates. Bestowed upon them by the UAE royal family, the four-bedroom villa is said to be worth at least £10million.
But speaking to the Daily Mail, a British diplomatic source who used to rub shoulders with the Yorks in the Gulf said: ‘It’s inconceivable that they’ll be visiting the region now, certainly not while the war is going on and it could, of course, be an indefinite war.’
Andrew has known for years that the Middle East with its billionaire sheiks and emirs could provide a seam of earnings, for himself and those he was close to.
His links to Abu Dhabi’s royal family go back to his days at Gordonstoun, the Scottish public school, where he met the future Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, now UAE president and known to Andrew as MBZ. His family are one of the richest in the world with an estimated fortune of £225billion. They own a vast property portfolio in London as well as a majority stake in Manchester City football club.
Andrew’s links to them became particularly useful in 2001 when, after retiring from the Royal Navy, he was appointed the UK’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment, a position which, it is alleged, he was able to exploit to enrich himself.
Beatrice was still a 19-year-old gap year student when, in January 2008, she first accompanied her father on an Abu Dhabi business trip. Guarded round the clock by taxpayer-funded protection officers, she checked into the Emirates Palace hotel, taking up residence in one of the gold and marble suites exclusively reserved for dignitaries.
But the diplomatic source who spoke to the Daily Mail this week says that aside from a brief appearance at Abu Dhabi’s World Future Energy Summit there appears to have been little time for any real work.
Beatrice (pictured, right, with Eugenie) was still a 19-year-old gap year student when, in January 2008, she first accompanied her father on an Abu Dhabi business trip
‘It was an out-and-out jolly, one of many,’ says the source. ‘British royalty was hugely admired and no expense was spared giving them the best time possible. Andrew had got used to the high life on offer in the area and he was showing his daughter how to enjoy it.’
York family visits to the Gulf state increased after the gifting of the Abu Dhabi villa in 2010. While the duke’s spokesman admitted at the time that he used the property for both personal and professional reasons, he denied it officially belonged to him.
In 2011, amid reports that ‘Air Miles Andy’ received gifts from the Abu Dhabi royal family during a visit, the ‘disgusted’ wife of an international politician was reported as saying that: ‘Even Beatrice, who was with him, got jewellery worth several thousands.’ Since then the Yorks, either together or separately, have returned to the region regularly.
In recent years, Beatrice and Eugenie’s visits to the Middle East have increased dramatically to the point of them being referred to as unofficial ‘cultural ambassadors’. Just last month, Eugenie was in Qatar again, visiting an art fair in the capital Doha which has since come under attack from Iran’s suicide drones.
Understanding how the Yorks have managed to fund their lives of luxury in recent years is not straightforward. While the latest accounts for Beatrice’s ’emotional intelligence’ business advisory company BY-EQ show a profit of £274,856, the records do not reveal from where that money came or what she paid herself. Eugenie’s earnings as a director at Mayfair art gallery Hauser & Wirth are put at £100,000 to £200,000 a year.
Andrew’s financial affairs have been notoriously opaque with much speculation about how, given the £20,000-a-year pension he receives from the Royal Navy, he was able to stump up over £7.5million in repairs for 30-room Royal Lodge in Windsor in 2003.
Sarah Ferguson, homeless and moving between friends and hotels since her eviction with Andrew, is also said to have her own contacts in the region, connections she is believed to have turned to in recent weeks in a desperate attempt to find a new income stream.
Cars are ablaze amid destruction from an Iranian missile strike in Ramat Gan, Israel, on Tuesday
According to the close family friend who spoke to the Daily Mail, all four may well struggle to keep up their profitable business connections from afar.
‘The power players in the Gulf like regular, face-to-face meetings with those they’re doing business with. The family’s absence from the Gulf will cause them a great deal of damage.’
For the time being, then, it looks as if the globe-trotting Yorks will have to temper their wanderlust.
Beatrice has signed up as a ‘visionary’ guest speaker at London Tech Week in June, just days before Royal Ascot – an event which she and Eugenie have now been told they cannot attend with the Royal Family.
Andrew, meanwhile, can do little but toast himself by the fire at Wood Farm while half a mile down the road his final destination, Marsh Cottage, is being renovated. His only visitors appear to have been the Lord Chamberlain of the Royal Household – Lord Benyon – and the Rev Canon Paul Williams, chaplain at Sandringham.
Amid the chaos of his sudden eviction from Royal Lodge last month, his beloved flat-screen TV is said to have been left behind in Windsor. According to the Daily Mail’s royal source: ‘For now he is struggling with the behind-the-times tech at Wood Farm.’
He isn’t allowed to leave the farm without permission, nor to receive visitors without clearance. While he lost his taxpayer-funded police protection in 2022, the King is said to have paid for private security officers, largely to ensure his troublesome brother doesn’t go wandering.
Not that there’s much chance of that, now that his ‘Plan B’ has turned to ashes.
