Royals made almost £2m from sale of horses received as gifts from prominent figures

Palace insists horses given to late queen, including 34 from emir of Dubai, were ‘personal gifts’

Greg Wood and David Pegg
Fri 7 Apr 2023 08.00 BST

King Charles III and his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, appear to have made almost £2m from the sale of horses that were gifts from prominent figures.

The Guardian has identified more than 40 horses that were apparently given to the queen by a Dubai sheikh, a Muslim religious leader and a Saudi royal.

Some of the horses were sold for profit by the queen, who was a passionate enthusiast for breeding and racing thoroughbreds. Others have been auctioned by the king, who in recent months has been selling some of the horses inherited from his mother, which are estimated to be worth at least £27m.
The queen’s most generous provider of racing and breeding stock by far is Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the emir of Dubai and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates. He appears to have been the source of at least 34 horses given to the royals.

The Aga Khan, Prince Shah Karim al-Husseini, the spiritual head of Shia Ismaili Muslims, appears to have given the royal family five horses, including Estimate, who gave the queen one of her most memorable victories on the track, in the 2013 Gold Cup at Royal Ascot.

The queen also received a horse from Denford Stud, which is owned by Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia, a half-brother of the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman; and another from a breeding operation owned by Qatar’s al-Thani family.

In total, 41 horses that raced in the royal colours over the last 15 years were given to Elizabeth, according to a Guardian analysis.

Of those, 29 went under the hammer at a public auction at some point over the past decade, realising a total of £1.93m.

Buckingham Palace indicated that it regards the horses given to the queen as private gifts. A spokesperson said: “Personal gifts given to Queen Elizabeth by those who knew her late majesty privately would remain private, as they would for any other individual.”

They said the monarchy’s gifts policy “makes very clear that gifts are classed as personal when they are given by people whom the member of the royal family knows privately and not during, or in connection with, an official engagement or duty.”

The policy, introduced in 1995, distinguishes between “official gifts”, which are generally those received in connection with a royal’s official role or during the course of a formal engagement, and “personal gifts”, received from people who members of the royal family know personally, which are not publicly declared.

However, the gifts of horses to the queen raise questions about whether the policy is sufficiently clear to deal with circumstances in which the relationship between the Windsors and their benefactors is more blurred.

The queen’s relationships with Sheikh Mohammed and the Aga Khan were arguably both official and personal, having been developed through formal encounters and a mutual interest in horse racing.

Sheikh Mohammed met the queen on several official occasions, according to the Court Circular, including at a reception in Buckingham Palace in November 2009, and in Abu Dhabi the following year when he hosted the queen and Prince Philip at the official launch of the design for the Zayed National Museum.

The queen and Sheikh Mohammed also attended the official signing of a “friendship treaty” at the Emirates Palace hotel in 2010. They appeared at various racing events in the UK, including at Royal Ascot in 2009 when Sheikh Mohammed joined the queen, Philip and Prince Andrew in their carriage.

Their relationship became more complicated in 2020 after Sheikh Mohammed was found by the high court to have abducted two of his own daughters and subjected his ex-wife to a campaign of intimidation. Palace officials subsequently briefed that the queen would no longer allow herself to be photographed with Sheikh Mohammed.

The court later awarded his ex-wife sole custody of their children after concluding that Sheikh Mohammed had used the military spyware Pegasus to carry out cyber-attacks on her and her lawyers, and published threatening poetry about her. A judge concluded he should have no face-to-face contact with the children, on account of his “abusive behaviour”.

Between 2013 and 2015, three horses presented to the queen by the Aga Khan, were sold for between £2,625 and £14,700.

The queen and Prince Philip hosted the Aga Khan and his family at a dinner party at Buckingham Palace in July 2008 to celebrate his golden jubilee. Ten years later, she hosted him at another dinner party, this time at Windsor Castle, for his diamond jubilee. Both were official engagements documented in the Court Circular.

The queen appears to have had a long history of accepting – and at times even demanding – horses as gifts. The Times reported two years ago that she accepted gift horses from Sheikh Mohammed even after his wife fled to London.

Last month, the German magazine Der Spiegel said it had found state papers documenting how the queen had asked for two horses as a gift while on a state visit to West Germany in 1978. The country’s president approved the gift in the interests of good relations, despite it being the most expensive gift given to a visiting head of state since the end of the second world war.

Susan Hawley, the executive director of Spotlight, a transparency campaign group, said UK ministers would generally be expected to publicly declare similar gifts and, if they wanted to keep them, reimburse the government. She said it was “not at all clear” why royals should be subject to different guidelines.

“Rules on not accepting gifts and disclosing any that are made are there for a purpose – to protect the reputation of the UK and its public institutions from accusations of being open to influence to the highest bidder,” she said.