Former PM Tony Blair’s role as Middle East peace envoy opened doors
In 2015 he flew to Nigeria to meet the new president, Muhammadu Buhari
Offered to sell Israeli drones and equipment to help defeat Boko Haram
Credentials then helped him win £20m deal with Kuwait to review economy
Later agreed to help dodgy company in South Korea secure an oil contract
The future looked bright. In June 2007, Tony Blair bequeathed his premiership to Gordon Brown and began zipping about the Middle East in private jets as an official peace envoy.
But
he was far from content with his unpaid yet prestigious role. After
all, he had never had any intention of living on his annual pension of
£63,468 — and hadn’t he promised Cherie that they’d be seriously wealthy
after leaving Downing Street? Jonathan Powell, his former chief of
staff, came to the rescue.
Setting up a meeting with a leading headhunter, Powell told him bluntly: ‘Tony needs a job.’
In
turn, the headhunter, Martin Armstrong, had a chat with Blair’s PR
friend Matthew Freud, and together the men agreed that the headhunter
should try the U.S. investment bank J.P. Morgan.
Armstrong’s
approach was fruitful. On July 11, 2007, the bank’s chief executive met
Blair at Freud’s office in Mayfair, and offered him a seat on the J.P.
Morgan board.
‘You’d
take over from George Shultz,’ said chief executive Jamie Dimon,
referring to the ailing former U.S. Secretary of State. Blair’s annual
fee, he added, would be $100,000 — about £72,000.
But
this failed to impress Blair. Bluntly, he told Dimon he wanted ‘a proper
job’ and expected at least £3 million a year, a five-year contract as
an adviser and a percentage of every contract he initiated.
If Dimon was taken aback, he didn’t show it. Within weeks, he’d offered Blair almost all he wanted.
It was a good start — but there was one person involved who was less than thrilled: the headhunter.
To
Armstrong’s dismay, more than a year after helping Blair land his
contract, he still hadn’t been paid the customary introductory fee from
the bank.
The former British Prime Minister ‘blurred’ the lines between his charity work and commercial interests
Perhaps
Blair could help, he thought. His chance came when he spotted the
former PM at a 40th birthday party for Freud’s then wife Elisabeth
Murdoch at her country estate in October 2008.
Approaching Blair, he introduced himself: ‘I’m the guy who placed you with J.P. Morgan...’
‘Good for you,’ replied Blair, and walked quickly away.
By
then, he had more important matters to contend with — such as a new
deal with Zurich Insurance to advise on climate change, for a salary of
about £180,000 a year.
He’d
also been retained as a paid adviser by Bernard Arnault, the head of a
French luxury-goods conglomerate, whom he’d once entertained at
Chequers.
His opportunities to make money seemed limitless...
Not
only did Blair’s role as a Middle East peace envoy open doors, but the
two charities he set up after leaving office were proving to be useful
calling cards.
There
was his Faith Foundation, which was meant to encourage tolerance
between the religions, and his Africa Governance Initiative (AGI) —
through which he hoped to advise leaders on how to run their countries.
To
them, his approach was nearly always the same: using millions donated
to AGI by charities or foreign government aid agencies, he’d set up a
‘delivery unit’ for them — based on a unit run by educationalist Michael
Barber, that he’d created while in Downing Street.
So
often did he peddle this line that Barber’s book, How To Run A
Government, soon became a ‘must read’ across the developing world.
But
what Blair never bothered to tell all the dictators and presidents was
that the Downing Street delivery unit had not been a conspicuous
success. Indeed, it had been closed down after just four years.
As well as promoting his charities, Blair also worked hard at increasing his fortune.
He
maintained there was a strict line drawn between his charities and
private work; but in practice this line was blurred, as was his frequent
use of British embassies paid for by the taxpayer.
Take, for instance, one of his more recent ventures.
In
May 2015, Blair flew to Nigeria to meet the new president, Muhammadu
Buhari, on a jet chartered by Evgeny Lebedev, who owns the London
Evening Standard with his father, a former KGB colonel.
After a night at the Hilton Hotel, Blair called the following morning on the British High Commissioner.
Dropping
in on British embassies had by then become a familiar routine: in every
country Blair visits, he expects the embassy to provide him with a
comprehensive security briefing and occasionally even overnight
accommodation.
But
although he was advising sovereign governments in ways that could
conflict with British interests, no one at Whitehall had dared to end
this perk.
Tony Blair greets His Highness Emir of Kuwait in Number 10 Downing Street, London, in February 2007
At
the Nigerian embassy, Blair was keen to discover more about the threat
posed by Boko Haram, the Islamic terror group murdering hundreds of
civilians in the north of the country.
Then,
armed with the classified information, he sped in a motor cavalcade to
the president’s office. It was their first meeting. Blair introduced
himself grandly as ‘Britain’s most successful Prime Minister’ and then
launched into his practiced sales pitch.
‘I
pioneered the skills to make government work effectively,’ he told the
president. ‘The Delivery Unit is the leader’s weapon to make his
government effective across the civil service and country.’
He
offered to establish a delivery unit within Buhari’s government, with
paid staff. But the president — a former army general and military
dictator famous for imprisoning his opponents without trial — looked
bored.
So did Lebedev, who had only come along because he was interested in Blair’s charity work fighting the Ebola virus.
‘Could you all leave us alone now?’ Blair announced suddenly. ‘I have a personal message for the president from David Cameron.’
But it was nothing of the kind.
Twenty minutes later, Buhari emerged looking noticeably disgruntled.
Blair, he told an aide, had used his access to tout for business on behalf of his private company, Tony Blair Associates.
Without
so much as a blush, he had offered to sell the president Israeli drones
and other military equipment to help defeat the Boko Haram uprising.
‘Blair is just after business,’ muttered Buhari.
During
the drive back to the airport, the local organizer for Blair’s AGI
charity asked whether he was mixing charity and business. ‘We don’t do
business in Africa,’ Blair replied.
‘Don’t worry. Only AGI and charitable work. We only do business in the Middle East and Asia.’
Two
weeks later, the local AGI organizer called Buhari’s office to ask
whether the president wanted to go ahead with a delivery unit. He was
rebuffed.
‘The president was not happy with Blair pushing the Israeli business,’ Buhari’s office warned him.
Anyone else might have desisted; not the eternally optimistic Blair.
Six
weeks later, in London, he met Bukola Saraki, the president of the
Nigerian senate and third most powerful person in the country.
This
time, as he discussed opportunities to introduce investors from the
Middle East to Nigeria, he was more successful. ‘We’d like that,’ said
Saraki — who was fully aware that Blair now also represented a wealth
fund based in Abu Dhabi.
In
his quest for profitable work, Blair sometimes agreed to give well-paid
speeches — including an address in Orlando, Florida, to the
International Sanitary Supply Association — manufacturers of lavatory
cleaners.
But for the most part, he concentrated on offering advice to sheikhs, presidents and dictators.
He
was pushing at an open door — after all, few other people in the world
could confide to potential clients that they had access to President
Obama and other world leaders.
His
impeccable credentials helped win him a £20 million deal with Kuwait to
review the country’s economy. Selected Kuwaiti experts were hired for
the project and flown to London for training.
His
visitors were directed to conduct exhaustive research in Kuwait to
identify the country’s problems. Then they were asked to visit Singapore
in order to study the country’s excellent education system, and South
Korea to study the health system.
Blair’s
eventual report — ‘Kuwait Vision 2035’ — was greeted with derision. It
was a lengthy repetition of Kuwait’s well- known problems, concluding
with a series of impractical solutions, according to critics.
To save face, the country’s rulers buried the report.
Not surprisingly, Blair was discovering that trading access to earn millions of pounds could be a grubby business.
U.I. Energy of South Korea wanted his help to secure an oil contract.
No matter that the company was later embroiled in a corruption scandal — Blair accepted the fee.
From
another company called PetroSaudi, he was paid £41,000 a month plus 2
per cent commission on any deals he brokered with Chinese officials.
It was short-lived: PetroSaudi was subsequently accused of bribing Malaysian politicians.
Another
of Blair’s lucrative deals, in 2011, was with Nursultan Nazarbayev, the
dictator of Kazakhstan, whom he’d once welcomed to Downing Street.
Unfortunately,
soon after the ex-PM started working for him, Kazakh security forces
shot dead 14 unarmed protesters and wounded 60 others. There were also
reports of opponents being tortured.
‘I don’t dismiss the human rights stuff,’ said Blair, trying to justify his connection with the dictator.
‘These
are points we make. There’s a whole new generation of administrators
there who are reformers, and we’re working with them.’
In
an hour-long video about Nazarbayev, Blair could be seen sitting
happily beside him, and repeatedly eulogist him. He also arranged for
his old crony Alastair Campbell and former Downing Street spokesman Tim
Allan to promote the despot.
The
following year, Nazarbayev asked Blair for advice about a speech he was
about to make in Cambridge. How should he address the killing of the 14
civilians?
‘Tragic though they were,’ Blair wrote, ‘that should not obscure the enormous progress that Kazakhstan has made.’
While expanding his empire, Blair has also added greatly to the fortunes of his original employer, J.P. Morgan.
Back
in 2010, he asked for a one-on-one meeting with the then Nigerian
president, Goodluck Jonathan — ostensibly to offer the services of AGI
and the Faith Foundation to help reconcile the country’s Muslims and
Christians.
Again, he was given an intelligence briefing by the British embassy in advance.
But
having charmed the president and — in the words of Jonathan’s staff —
satisfied his ego, Blair then introduced him to J.P. Morgan chief Jamie
Dimon.
Another of
Blair’s lucrative deals, in 2011, was with Nursultan Nazarbayev, the
dictator of Kazakhstan, whom he’d once welcomed to Downing Street
The
banker offered to manage Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund — and Jonathan
agreed. No other bank in the world was asked to tender for this
profitable work.
From
Nigeria, Blair flew with Dimon to Liberia, where he already had a
charity AGI team in place to advise the president. The upshot? J.P.
Morgan invested in a commercial project in Liberia.
Then,
in September 2012, Blair was asked by a banker to help Ivan Glasenberg,
the chief executive of Glencore, the world’s biggest commodity trading
house, to buy a rival called Xstrata.
To succeed, Glasenberg needed the support of the prime minister of Qatar, which owned nearly 12 per cent of Xstrata’s shares.
So a hefty fee was agreed for Blair to introduce the pair and encourage the deal.
Although present at their hour-long meeting, he remained curiously silent.
Afterwards, Glasenberg wondered if Blair’s huge fee had been a waste of money.
In
addition to serving bankers, Blair had many other commercial paymasters
— such as Mubadala of Abu Dhabi. This was a sovereign wealth fund that
reportedly invested £3.6 billion in 2013 to mine bauxite in Guinea —
where Blair already had AGI staff in the president’s office. And as
Mubadala started investing in Vietnam, Serbia, Colombia and West Africa,
Blair was contracted to earn commissions of up to 20 per cent.
He
also popped up on the advisory panel that supervised the construction
of British Petroleum’s £32 billion oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to the
Mediterranean. Oddly enough, he was also paid to advise the president of
Azerbaijan. In addition, his services were called in when BP was
seeking new oil concessions in Abu Dhabi.
The
sheikh who employed Blair privately to work for his investment fund
also happened to be the head of Abu Dhabi’s Supreme Petroleum Council.
And so it goes on.
Today,
with his tangled web of charity and private interests, Blair remains at
the center of a bewildering number of enterprises.
By
February this year, he claimed to have established a network of
commercial contacts in 25 nations — in parallel with charity enterprises
in 20 countries.
In
the process, he had amply fulfilled his pledge to Cherie. The Blairs
are now indeed seriously rich, and have so far spent more than £25
million on UK property alone. Yet, still, Tony Blair cannot resist
seeking new deals.
To
this day, he continues to be feted as a celebrity in destitute African
countries run by corrupt leaders and dictators — the very people he
pledged as Prime Minister to remove. But in the rest of the world his
stock is besmirched.
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