During the bustling “Saudi Season” in Riyadh, the opulent five-star Ritz-Carlton stands out as the quintessential destination for visitors. Last week, the hotel’s lavishly decorated lobby became the setting for an exclusive event hosted by Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrice of York.

Princess Beatrice was captured hosting a regal tea party attended by some of the world’s wealthiest individuals. This visit marks her second trip to the Saudi capital within two weeks, following her participation in the late October Future Investment Initiative, colloquially known as “Davos in the Desert.”

Beatrice’s recent journey is part of a series of visits to the Middle East, which she and her younger sister, Princess Eugenie, have undertaken in recent years, seemingly mirroring the controversial travels of their father, often referred to as “Air Miles Andy.”

The well-publicized connections between their father and the affluent leaders of the Gulf States are widely recognized. However, there is rising concern that the princesses, who do not hold working royal status, may jeopardize their own reputations by engaging in lucrative business ventures in regions with questionable human rights records.

The murky links between ‘Air Miles Andy’ and the Gulf States’ mega-wealthy autocrats are well known.

Now there are growing concerns that the princesses, who are not working royals, risk compromising their own reputations by pursuing lucrative business interests in Arab states with dubious human rights records.

Prince William is said to be urging his cousins to allow an ‘ethics’ check on their finances, while the King, determined to protect his nieces from being tarnished by their father’s misdemeanours, has offered the services of one of his senior advisers. 

Yet formal offers of help – and scrutiny – are said to have been politely declined by the sisters. 

Princess Beatrice and her younger sister Eugenie have gone on multiple Middle East jaunts in recent years as they follow in their disgraced father’s choppy wake

According to one royal insider: ‘William is pushing for them to let some sort of ethics check be run on their finances to ensure nothing can be linked back to any of their father’s less salubrious contacts and thus avoid future scandal. It might lead to them having to return some interests.

‘Whether they will agree, or even if it’s possible to sort out the tangled web without access to Andrew’s accounts – which he won’t allow – isn’t known.’

The source added: ‘The King is also trying to give them more structure by offering the services of one of his senior officials on secondment for a year or so. They seem to be resisting the urges of uncle and cousin and are trying to go it alone.’

What is clear is that business is booming for the princesses, who have clung on to their royal titles while watching their parents being denuded of theirs.

While Beatrice was being feted in Riyadh last month, a beleaguered Sarah Ferguson was holed up at Royal Lodge in Windsor, deleting the word ‘Duchess’ from paperwork relating to the eight limited companies of which she is still a director and reportedly drowning her sorrows with staff in a purpose-built bar at the back of the mansion called ‘The Doghouse’. 

Also lying low at Royal Lodge, and according to one report ‘ranting and muttering’ about his plight, is their father – now plain old Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

He has applied to shut down the commercial arm of his Pitch@Palace networking initiative, which he once planned to hand down to his daughters, after the removal – to where is not clear – of almost all its remaining £220,000.

The princesses’ burgeoning careers – Beatrice, 37, in business, Eugenie, 35, in the art world – could, of course, be regarded as in keeping with the blunt advice the King is said to have given his nieces; that they must now ‘pay their own way’ within his slimmed-down monarchy.

Last week, Beatrice was snapped at the five-star Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh where she hosted an exclusive and very regal tea party for some of the richest men on the planet

But with the unenviable task of pursuing half-in, half-out roles in the Royal Family, questions about how Their Royal Highnesses earn money, and who they associate with, will simply not go away. 

Beatrice’s Riyadh tea party, for example, was in the same hotel where eight years ago a violent purge of the Saudi ‘old guard’ saw royals, tycoons and ministers beaten and tortured in its opulent rooms.

And another reminder of the ongoing threat of reputational risk came this week with news that Hauser & Wirth, the art gallery of which Eugenie is a director, has been charged with breaching Russian sanctions after allegedly making available an item to a person connected with Russia. 

This charge, made after a HM Revenue and Customs investigation, seems to be the first under the law banning the supply of luxury goods to Russia.

While Eugenie is not a member of the company’s London board – and there is no suggestion that she was involved in the alleged supply – her link to a firm caught up in a potential scandal is not ideal. 

But it is the sisters’ frequent visits to the Middle East that are causing most concern, with suggestions that Beatrice is unofficially resuming her father’s role as UK trade envoy – a position he ultimately exploited to enrich himself.

It is a region, as Buckingham Palace admitted in 2011 while defending Andrew’s numerous trips, where carrying a royal title is hugely influential. ‘Middle East potentates like meeting princes,’ said a spokesperson.

The sisters’ frequent visits to the Middle East are causing concern, with suggestions that Beatrice (pictured with her father in Abu Dhabi in 2008) is unofficially resuming her father’s role as UK trade envoy – a position he ultimately exploited to enrich himself

‘He comes in as the son of the Queen and that opens doors.’

The Princesses, no doubt, are able to wield similar influence thanks to their HRH titles. But for whose benefit?

As The Daily Mail reported last month, the sisters have made several visits. In April last year they travelled to Riyadh for an event to discuss ‘global challenges and opportunities’. 

That same month, Beatrice, the chief executive of BY-EQ (the tech advisory firm she founded in 2022) travelled to Dubai for a conference ‘to advance the entrepreneurial corridor between the UAE and the UK’. Six months later, in October, she was back in Riyadh for that year’s Future Investment Initiative.

Then she was in Abu Dhabi at a conference to discuss AI and meet with crown prince Khalid bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is so close to her father that he has offered Andrew the use of a palace once he is booted out of Royal Lodge. 

That month, Eugenie was in Qatar, on a museums trip during which she attended a luxury jewellery exhibition by high-end brand Chaumet and met with the sister of the country’s ruler.

And they’ve kept up their jet-setting to the Middle East this year.

In January, Eugenie flew to Saudi for the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah. In April, the sisters took their husbands, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi and Jack Brooksbank, to the Bahrain Grand Prix. 

In April, the sisters took their husbands, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi (pictured) and Jack Brooksbank, to the Bahrain Grand Prix

As non-working royals, both are, of course, free to earn their own living. Even if they cash in on their prestigious family connections and even if their titles open doors that might otherwise remain firmly closed. 

Princess Anne’s son Peter Phillips, for example, has traded on his status as a member of the Royal Family. His company landed the £750,000 contract to organise a street party on The Mall for Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday party in 2016. In 2020 he was paid to take part in a Chinese advert for milk.

The problem for Beatrice and Eugenie is that, unlike Anne’s children, they carry HRH titles and are following in the footsteps of parents who will seemingly go down in history as a pair of grifters. 

As the royal insider told The Mail on Sunday: ‘No one knows what influence their father’s contacts had in their formative years. For most of their gilded lives he was their financial adviser.’

Nor can their feckless debt-ridden mother be said to have set an example when it comes to earning an honest living. 

Amid revelations about Fergie’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, it emerged last week that she is grappling with a legacy of business misadventures as she comes to terms with the loss of her Duchess status and her home.

One project haunting her is Gate Ventures, a failed theatre and media investment company for which she was a director from 2017 to 2019 alongside former BBC and ITV boss Lord Grade. 

She was brought in as a brand ambassador, using her glitzy Duchess title to woo small-time investors in the Far East. But many of its investments and loans were made to companies linked to the directors – including £290,000 to Ms Ferguson personally, as well as £232,000 to her fledgling tea company Ginger & Moss. 

Beatrice and her husband at the wedding banquet of Crown Prince Al Hussein and Rajwa Alseif at the Al Husseinya Palace in Jordan two years ago

The company was placed into administration by the High Court in 2022 and is still facing legal action from liquidators seeking to recoup the £19 million lost by the company. The MoS understands that Fergie has instructed lawyers to help her fight any forthcoming claim.

Gate Ventures also loaned £32,000 to another company linked to the former Duchess – London tech start-up vVoosh, for which she acted as ‘brand ambassador’. 

The man behind it – former British soldier Manuel Fernandez, 57 – was once rumoured to be Ms Ferguson’s boyfriend and a regular visitor to the Swiss chalet she had co-owned with Andrew, though she always maintained they were just friends.

VVoosh went into administration last month after failing to launch a long-promised lifestyle app, and a linked charity – set up to ‘help mankind’ and previously mentioned as evidence of Ms Ferguson’s philanthropy – has not spent a penny. The Charity Commission told The Daily Mail this week that it intends to shut it down.

With her reputation in tatters, Ms Ferguson’s hopes of making money seem slim. Her latest children’s book, Flora & Fern: Kindness Along The Way, has already been withdrawn from sale.

Last week, The Daily Mail revealed that Ms Ferguson’s plight is so desperate, the King is planning to pay for her to be rehomed out of his own purse. The royal insider says: ‘There is some concern that Sarah may end up, or may technically be already, bankrupt. 

‘She has an amazing capacity to burn through earnings and money she is loaned by friends and businesses she is associated with. Now she can’t flash her coronet or claim royal credentials, the bulk of her earning capacity – and her trustworthiness for loans – has ended.’

‘Sarah is encouraging Beatrice and Eugenie to get on with life as normal and discouraging them from meeting with her,’ says the royal insider. ‘She’s concerned that being associated publicly with their parents could damage their own chances of remaining part of the royal fold’

Markedly, there have been no Royal Lodge visits from Andrew and Fergie’s daughters, who are in touch with their mother (but not their father) by phone.

‘Sarah is encouraging Beatrice and Eugenie to get on with life as normal and discouraging them from meeting with her,’ says the royal insider. ‘She’s concerned that being associated publicly with their parents could damage their own chances of remaining part of the royal fold.’

While Mountbatten-Windsor and Ferguson, 66, find themselves cast out from polite society, their daughters have suffered no such fate so far. On Monday, after her Saudi trip, Beatrice popped up in London at a charity visit to the Borne ‘premature birth’ research laboratories at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

Last week she was made deputy patron of The Outward Bound Trust, working alongside her uncle, the Duke of Edinburgh, who is royal patron.

The announcement is likely to have been particularly bruising for Andrew, who spent years at the Outward Bound’s helm before being forced to step down as patron in 2019 after his disastrous Newsnight interview.

But while he and Fergie have been cast off by charities they once supported, Beatrice and Eugenie continue to be in demand.

The princesses are clearly, while attempting to emerge from the very long shadow of their scandalous parents, treading a perilously thin line.