Stephen Day, a former head of the Foreign Office’s Middle East section, took
the highly unusual step of writing to three Whitehall departments, making an
impassioned plea for the Government to end the Duke’s “embarrassing”
activities.
Mr Day, whose letter has been obtained by The Daily Telegraph, said the Duke
was the “worst person” to deploy in countries such as Qatar, where his
presence was seen as “crass”.
He also alleged that the Duke had held a “worrying” private meeting with Col
Gaddafi three years ago at the home of Sakher el-Materi, the son-in-law of
the recently ousted Tunisian president, and described by Mr Day as “the
worst of all the crooks in the presidential family”.
In another development, The Daily Telegraph has learnt that the Duke could be
asked to give evidence in two separate legal cases involving his friend
Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted paedophile.
The latest disclosures will increase pressure on the Duke to resign as
Britain’s special representative for trade and investment, following weeks
of controversy over his relationships with Mr Epstein and a host of other
business contacts. The Duke has faced questions over his friendships with
billionaires and politicians in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tunisia, Libya and
Turkmenistan.
Goga Ashkenazi, a Kazakh businesswoman and close friend of the Duke, has
claimed he is “very, very worried” about his trade role as a result, though
the Duke has denied he discussed the matter with her. On Tuesday, the Queen
reportedly summoned the Duke to an hour-long meeting at Buckingham Palace to
express her concern over the ongoing scandal, which is overshadowing the
build-up to next month’s royal wedding.
Mr Day, who worked as an emissary for the Prince of Wales in the 1980s and was
ambassador to Qatar and Tunisia during a 30-year diplomatic career, wrote to
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, earlier this week. His letter, which
was also sent to Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, and Sir Jon Cunliffe,
the Prime Minister’s foreign affairs adviser, begins: “It takes a lot to
bring former British Ambassadors to criticise a member of the Royal Family
in public but it is surely now recognised that the Duke’s activities are
doing such serious damage to the Royal Family itself and to Britain’s
political, diplomatic and
commercial interests that an entirely new role should be found for him as soon
as possible.”
He suggested it was “insulting” to ambassadors to use the Duke to “open doors”
for trade deals, which, he said, was already the “primary job” of diplomats
and that using the Duke gave the impression that Britain was happy to work
with “dodgy fixers and politicians”.
Mr Day used the letter to raise serious questions about the Duke’s friendships
with senior members of the Tunisian regime, which was overturned in January
amid accusations of widespread corruption.
“The Duke’s activities in Tunisia were the source of rumour and speculation in
Tunisian business circles for several years and I was often asked what he
was up to and in what way he was promoting trade with Britain,” Mr Day wrote.
“It was embarrassing to have to say that I had no idea, though I was at the
time President of the Tunisian-British chamber of commerce.”
He said the “most worrying” story about the Duke’s activities “emerged two or
three years ago” when the Duke stayed in the holiday home of Mohamed Mabrouk
in Hammamet, Tunisia.
Mr Mabrouk is a son-in-law of the ousted Tunisian president, Zine el-Abidine
Ben Ali, and appears on a Treasury list of Tunisians whose British assets
have now been frozen following accusations of money laundering.
Mr Day was told that the Duke’s stay at Mr Mabrouk’s villa was arranged by
Tarek Kaituni, a convicted arms smuggler whose friendship with the Duke was
cited in Parliament last week by Chris Bryant MP as one of the reasons the
Duke should step down.
During the Duke’s stay, Mr Mabrouk was contacted by Sakher el-Materi, the
son-in-law of Mr Ben Ali, “to say that Gaddafi was staying as his guest and
wished to see the Duke”.
“Mabrouk arranged for the Duke to go over to the nearby villa of Materi for a
meeting.”
Mr Day pointed out that such a meeting was likely to cause controversy in
Tunisia, “a country that has a deep dislike for the Libyan leader who twice
made serious attempts to overthrow the Tunisian government”.
He also said he was “amazed” to discover last week that Mr Materi was a guest
of the Duke at Buckingham Palace last year.
Turning to the Duke’s activities in Qatar, where Mr Day was ambassador in the
early 1980s, he expressed dismay at reports that England’s 2018 World Cup
bid team had sought to use the Duke to secure a vote from Qatar, which will
host the 2022 tournament.
He added that the Duke was “the worst person to deploy” in any attempt to
shore up Britain’s relationship with Qatar. Mr Day, who left the diplomatic
service in 1993 to set up his own consultancy, concludes his letter by
telling ministers that the deluge of media stories about the Duke’s
friendships with questionable business contacts could “tarnish” the
reputations of Britain’s reputable allies in the Middle East and once again
urged the Government to remove the Duke from his post. “To use a member of
our Royal family for such purposes is seen by Arabs as crude and unworthy of
our historic connections,” the letter states.
“It is quite the wrong way to promote our interests in this important region
of the world and the sooner we are seen to have relearned how to engage with
Arabs the better.” Last night Mr Day confirmed he had sent the letter and
told The Daily Telegraph: “I decided to write it because I was impressed by
the Government’s response to the current unrest in the Arab world, and in
particular their response to the uprising in Tunisia, and I was worried that
that might be tarnished by the Duke’s activities. I have not had a response
yet from any of the departments the letter was sent to.”
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “The Duke was on a private visit to
Tunisia in August 2008 when an unplanned, informal meeting took place with
Col Gaddafi. He did not stay with Mohamed Mabrouk.”
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