Prince Andrew is facing new questions over a 2019 Pitch@Palace award being handed to a suspected Turkish fraudster, who has since been linked to more than £1 million in payments received by the Duke of York, UK media outlets have reported.
On 6 November 2019, Selman Turk received the Pitch@Palace People's Choice Award before reportedly arranging the transfer of payments totalling £1.1 million to the Duke of York, £250,000 to his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, and £25,000 to Princess Eugenie.
The Guardian cited unnamed participants of the 2019 Pitch@Palace event as saying that they see Turk's Pitch@Palace victory as unusual because he "won it by miles" and his pitch was "crap". Some suspected that he might have used bots, or autonomous internet programmes, to boost his vote.
The development unfolds as
Prince Andrew and his former wife Sarah Ferguson remain embroiled in a financial dispute between Turk and Nebahat Evyap Isbilen, a 76-year-old Turkish millionaire who claims that the 35-year-old entrepreneur defrauded her by stealing about £40 million.
The complicated case is still in its early stages as no trial has yet taken place, with Turk denying any wrongdoing.
In preliminary hearings, it was alleged that "substantial sums" were paid to the Duke and Duchess of York several years ago, but there has been no suggestion they played any part in the Turk-related allegations of fraud.
The 76-year-old millionaire is the wife of an imprisoned former member of parliament in Turkey. Her husband, Ilhan Isbilen, the former deputy leader of the ruling AK Party, was jailed in 2015 after an attempted coup.
Mrs Isbilen is said to have made the payment to the royal under the belief she was paying for help with a passport that would enable her to leave her homeland, where she was ostensibly facing political persecution.
The Telegraph earlier claimed that the Duke of York had received payments worth over £1 million from Turk after the two met through Prince Andrew's gun smuggler friend, Tarek Kaituni, in the early summer of 2019. Kaituni reportedly attended the royal's former wife's 60th birthday party in mid-October 2019 and Princess Eugenie's wedding in October 2018.
The Pitch@Palace competition is an initiative set up by Prince Andrew in 2014 to support entrepreneurs by "providing them with the best opportunities to access mentors and advisers, distribution systems and supply chains, connections and investment". In late November 2019, the royal stepped down from his role as head of the initiative following
his "car crash" interview with the BBC, in which he admitted to his friendship with late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.