Meet the girls with get-up and Goga: Prince Andrew's friend talks about her new venture
In between hanging out with royals and A-list stars, Goga Ashkenazi does what she knows best…making billions. Now she and her equally well-connected pal Caroline Stanbury have decided to combine business with pleasure, she tells Louette Harding
Goga with best friend and business partner Caroline Stanbury
Goga Ashkenazi, all legs and lips, is striding down the stairs to say hello. Yesterday, she did a charity bike ride from London to Brighton, but she doesn’t seem to be suffering from any aftereffects. She is 30 and a billionairess, thanks to her oil and gas engineering company and entrepreneurial exploits in her native Kazakhstan. People list her intelligence (Oxford degree) and charm (good chums with Prince Andrew) as factors in her dizzying success, but I’m wondering if we have not missed the most basic: her remarkable stamina.
And now she is adding another string to her bow, just for fun. She has become an equal partner in her friend Caroline Stanbury’s venture, Gift-Library.com. Caroline, 31, a stylist, set up the web business two years ago to take the hard work out of choosing the perfect gift. There are gifts that only a Goga could afford, and gifts at £3. ‘Caroline loves picking the stock,’ Goga says, ‘while I know what business strategy we should be taking. I tell her, “We should go to America, translate the site into Russian…” and she replies, “Isn’t that vase great?”’ She laughs throatily. They have mixed in the same circles for a decade, but got to know each other properly about two and a half years ago, when they sat next to each other on a plane.
‘We’re very different. My character is very masculine and she’s very girlie. I come to her for girlie-time, which I never had before. All my friends used to be men, but now Caroline is my best friend.’
How did she get here – this pagan goddess in her London home? Or, for the full gossip-column description, her ‘£28 million house in Holland Park, West London, complete with butler, chauffeur, chefs, maid, nanny and dining room with gold-leaf ceiling’, which she bought for cash. (I should add that this is an underestimation of the staff.) The house, now her principal residence where she lives with her three-year-old son, Adam, is expensively formal, a stage set waiting for a party. Her study – the shelves empty of books, the desk bare of papers – provides mute testimony to her spending half her time away on business.
But her life isn’t sad, it’s packed with friends, parties and amusing incidents. Is it true she accidentally bought a painting at a charity auction by waving at pal Jennifer Lopez? ‘I was saying hi,’ she laughs, miming a huge wave, ‘and then I was sitting there asking, “What have I bought?” It was quite an expensive painting.’
Enjoying a night out with Prince Andrew
Goga relaxing in the Italian sunshine with her one-time beau, sports mogul Flavio Briatore
She gets her drive from ambitious parents. Her father rose high in the old Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev and was recruited to Moscow’s Central Committee, one of the privileged party elite. When the Soviet Union crumbled, he returned to Kazakhstan to buy ‘a bunch of factories’. Goga stayed in Moscow with her mother for her schooling; then, aged 13, attended English boarding school Stowe, barely able to speak the language.
‘I could say, “Hello. My name is Goga.” It was very intimidating. We slept in dormitories
of eight. I had a fight with a girl because she switched on a light [at night] – literally a fist fight. But, by the end, I became very popular. My enemies became friends.’ A contemporary remembers her as the girl they all wanted to be: ‘She was so much more sophisticated than us. We would return from exeats in a Volvo, with
a new hoodie from Gap. She would return in a helicopter, with bags from Armani Collezioni.’ At 16, she was caught kissing a boy in her room. Was she a rebel? ‘Kissing a boyfriend wasn’t rebellious – all the girls were doing it – but I
was the one that got caught.’ She thought it hypocritical that she was rusticated when ‘more severe stuff went unpunished’, and left Stowe in high dudgeon for Rugby.
An A-grade student, why did she blow her Oxford degree – she got a lowly third in modern history and economics – for a man, falling for jet-setter Dino Lalvani, now head of telecom company Binatone, and following him on to the party circuit? ‘Well, it wasn’t for a man!’ She waves a dismissive hand. ‘I was doing internships at various investment banks when I realised that what I was studying at university I was never going to use – so it didn’t matter what grade I got. I also discovered the social life of London. We used to go to Chinawhite every Wednesday – it was like a religion,’ she giggles. ‘You have to do it when you’re 19 or 20. I wouldn’t go to a nightclub now if you paid me.’
She has since been linked with a select band of successful men, including sports mogul Flavio Briatore (she left him to pick up with Lalvani again) and Stefan Ashkenazy, the Californian hotel heir she wed in 2004 and divorced around 2006. She seems to manage the remarkable feat of staying friends with her exes. ‘It’s true. I haven’t got one ex who is not a friend.’ And then there is Prince Andrew – they are ‘just friends’, right? ‘Yes. Just friends. But have I ever flirted with Prince Andrew? Well, yes. I’m a flirty girl. I’ve flirted with every single person, man or woman, whom I’ve encountered.
‘Prince Andrew is a good friend. We hang out together – that’s the end of it. There’s a lot of press coverage and he, being a gentleman, always apologises for it. He doesn’t blame you. He doesn’t say, “Oh, you spoke about me!” Never, in my case.’ So what is it she likes about him so much? ‘He’s very interesting. He is an encyclopaedia. The politics he knows! He can answer any question on history. Nobody knows this – he goes canoeing in like, the South or North Pole, every year with his school friends. He holds parties for friends from a school he went to for about a month in Canada. He’s just a very kind, very cool man. I wish everyone could have a conversation with him,’ she finishes.
Part of Goga’s appeal is her self-sufficiency, her lack of neediness. Who, I ask, would she call if heartbroken? ‘I wouldn’t call anybody,’ she replies. ‘I deal with problems myself. I like to be around people when I’m happy, not when I’m unhappy.’ She says her parents and sister Meruert, who is ten years older, made sure she never lacked pride in herself. ‘If I get kicked out of school, it’s a bad school, they say. If I’m going out with someone, “He’s fantastic! We love him!” As soon as we break up, it’s, “We didn’t like him that much.” I guess you start believing your decisions might be right.’ She recalls a school report she was scared to show her strict father because she’d been chattering in class. ‘He said, “Do you know how long it took us to teach you to talk? It was a long time. I’m officially telling you, you can speak whenever you like.”’
So a man probably has to be very grown up to cope with her. Who is the love of her life? ‘Hopefully, I haven’t met him yet,’ she says, with a sudden shift of mood. ‘I love my exes, but I don’t love them like that any more. I want to believe it’s still to come. I don’t see myself [remaining] single, no.’
‘I’ve flirted with every single man and woman I’ve met’
When I asked the question, I was thinking of her son’s father, oligarch Timur Kulibayev. Goga met him through business in 2005 and, according to gossip, soon fell in love. But not only was Timur married, he was the son-in-law of the Kazakh president, and was reportedly told to end the affair or risk losing his wealth. When I ask about this, Goga says simply, ‘If I speak about him there are very serious implications in Kazakhstan for him.
All I can say is he is a fantastic man. He’s one of the most talented businessmen I’ve ever met. People don’t realise how worldly he is, even though he lives in Kazakhstan. I’m proud to be – at this point – his friend.’
And these men should not overshadow her own achievements. Tatler dubbed her a ‘Bond girl’, which seems unintentionally demeaning. ‘Yeah, people assume I’m sleeping with somebody [to get where I have].’ The truth, she says, is that in 2003, after spotting potential in Kazakhstan, she used her family connections to move into the gas and engineering industry, constructing pipelines and infrastructure and expanding into gold mining. The adrenalin rush of business is her motivation.
‘I have a lot of projects I’m working on that I’m buzzing about just now. I love it when it comes together in my head and I know exactly how I’m going to do it. And you feel very proud of yourself when you construct a building, for example.’ The old Soviet Union is a notoriously chauvinistic environment… ‘I’ve encountered it in all countries,’ she interrupts, ‘but it is more in your face.’ How do you deal with it? ‘You get tougher.
You become like a stone. Otherwise, you get too hurt. “But how could you do that to me?”’ She bleats mock-childishly. ‘At work, I don’t have feelings. There’s no room for feelings.’
With former husband Stefan, the Californian hotel heir she married in 2002
She went into business with Caroline partly because of workaholic tendencies. ‘We’ve been spending a lot of time together and this gives that time a sort of legitimacy. I feel like I’m not wasting my time, that there’s a business value as well.’ She laughs at her stumbling explanation.
‘Oh, for Goga this is the ideal company,’ Caroline tells me later. Caroline is an English rose – a former girlfriend of Prince Andrew – married to Turkish-born financier Cem Habib, by whom she has a four-year-old daughter and six-month-old twins. After years working as a stylist and shopper, she started Gift-Library in 2008 because, ‘as a working mother, the last thing I want to think of when I get home is the gift I need to get for a baby shower. And I’m sick of taking the obligatory flowers to dinner parties. You can get a nice coffee-table book from us for £25. You can package four brands in one box and make your own bespoke gift without going to four different stores.’
But if Caroline is all details and style, Goga is the engine. ‘It is a company that has huge potential,’ she says. ‘We are intending to make it very big – or I am. Caroline says, “I’m not sure,” and I say, “Listen, I will provide the financing.”’
I ask Goga how she copes with working motherhood and she replies frankly: ‘My mother worked, I had my own life. I’ve provided my son with great nannies and governesses. I’m better at what I do than being with children. I love him as much as I could ever love, but I don’t think he needs me to teach him letters or colours
– it is something that can be done better by professionals. He was signed up for Eton from the age of one week. I want him to have a guru for martial arts from an early age, so there’s a man in his life who will give him Buddhist values, and for the sport. I don’t feel he is at all unfortunate. I think he will learn how to become a whole person without needing anybody.’
She tells me how at the end of her first week in England she called her mother. ‘I said, “I want to come home.” She said, “No problem. We will organise your flights for tomorrow.” And I said, “Hey, wait a minute, I’m just complaining. But I’m not ready to give up just yet.”’
