The Duke is also on good terms with Timur Kulibayev, whose father-in-law is President of Kazakhstan and who paid a generous £15m – £3m more than the guide price – for Sunninghill Park, the Duke and Duchess of York's former marital home. And Abu Dhabi's rulers think so highly of him that last year they gave him free use of a four-bedroom town house, said to be worth £1m.
But the revelation that provoked calls for his resignation last March was his continued friendship with an American financier, Jeffrey Epstein, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison in Florida for soliciting prostitution. The billionaire hedge fund manager was reported to have had sexual contact with a large number of teenage girls, many of whom have civil cases against him.
The Duke has known Epstein for years. In 1999, he invited the financier and his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the disgraced media mogul Robert Maxwell, to Balmoral. He also met Victoria Roberts, whom Epstein hired as a "travelling masseuse" when she was 15 years old. There is no evidence that the Duke knew Epstein was an alleged child molester before the offences came to light, but he certainly should have known by last December, when he flew to New York to spend four days as Epstein's guest. His office also knew that last year Epstein paid £15,000 to Johnny O'Sullivan, the former personal assistant to the Prince's former wife, Sarah Ferguson, to help the Duchess sort out of her mounting debts.
