Mingling among the guests who attended a surprise 60th birthday party for Sarah, Duchess of York was Tarek Kaituni, a convicted gun smuggler and long-standing, if controversial, friend of her former husband.

It has now emerged that the birthday bash, held in October 2019 at the Royal Lodge home in Windsor Great Park shared by the Duke and Duchess, was partially funded by one of Kaituni’s associates, the alleged fraudster Selman Turk.

It was Kaituni, who The Telegraph can now reveal, introduced Mr Turk to the Duke of York in the early summer of 2019, a few months before the party was held.

Mr Turk is now embroiled in a High Court battle over an alleged international £40 million fraud, as part of which he gave the Duke more than a million pounds, along with a payment of £225,000 to the Duchess through a third party account.

Court documents revealed by this newspaper show that Mr Turk, who hosted the Duke and Mr Kaituni at a dinner at his home in December 2019, also instructed £25,000 to be paid to the Duke and Duchess’ daughter Princess Eugenie over the course of two days in October that year. 

The second payment of £15,000 was listed as a birthday gift to the Princess, but was in fact to pay for the surprise party thrown by the Duke for his former wife.