It's the damning new book that lifts the lid on Tony and Cherie Blair's lust for money. Yesterday, in our exclusive serialisation, we told how revelations about his relationship with a tycoon's wife put a strain on the Blair marriage. Today we reveal how the couple are happy to sell their services to some of the world's most repulsive tyrants . . .
Tony Blair makes a business out of providing consultancy to mostly unacceptable and disreputable clients. How else to explain the work he does for President el-Sisi in Egypt — who obtained his power by a military coup — or Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, not to mention the consultancy he provides, at great expense no doubt, to the unelected leaders of Gulf countries.
But perhaps the best-documented example of this touting of contacts built up over years of running a British government is seen in his consultancy to Kazakhstan, a million-square-mile country in central Asia.
This last contract, worth a massive £16 million for the first two years alone, would lead many to ask if a former Prime Minister of a Western democracy should even be associating with someone with the record for human rights abuse that its president Nursultan Nazarbayev has, let alone giving him public relations advice.
Nazarbayev has held power for 23 years, ever since the country was hived off from the old Soviet Union. In that time he has built up an appalling human rights record. Criticising him is illegal, the police routinely torture opponents and child labour is used in the country's tobacco industry.
A newspaper that attacked him had its offices burned down and a dead dog left hanging from a window. Attached to the corpse was a note stating simply: 'You won't get a second warning.'
In 2012, a report by the international monitoring group Human Rights Watch detailed violence against striking oil workers in which police and military shot dead at least a dozen protesters and wounded nearly 100 others.
A few years earlier, the leading opposition candidate was killed three weeks before an election. In the country's most recent poll in 2011, the president was re-elected by an improbable popular vote of 95 per cent of the electorate.
He is president for life anyway. The country's constitution prescribes a maximum of two presidential terms for any one person but its parliament voted to amend this for Nazarbayev and allow him to seek re-election as many times as he wishes.
Scandalously, he has also been granted permanent immunity from prosecution for himself and his family — a wise precaution on his part given that the Nazarbayev family was embroiled in a series of investigations by Western governments into money laundering, bribery, and assassinations.
And yet this dictator with unlimited powers and the reputation as a virtual gangster now has a former British Prime Minister in his pocket.
The darkness of the deal between Blair and Nazarbayev was set against a historic backcloth of pure innocence. How fitting that, in 2000, Blair entrusted into the arms of Nazarbayev his young son Leo, just six months old at the time, at Downing Street.
The thickset Kazakh bruiser, who was then 62 and had sired a number of children of his own, cradled the baby, Blair beaming as he looked on. Since leaving office, in the wheels-within-wheels world that he now inhabits, Blair, in his turn, was recommended for the job of promoting Kazakhstan and its president by one of his most influential contacts — Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
Its state investment fund, Mubadala, also has Blair on its payroll. Blair's office claims his role in Kazakhstan is to 'support the development of reforms' in the country. It maintains he is 'well aware' of the criticisms made of the Kazakhstan government but believes 'there are also visible signs of progress'.
It's not clear what 'reforms' or 'progress' they are referring to.
A recent Human Rights Watch report detailed what it called 'significant setbacks' in Kazakhstan with a new sentence of 12 years in prison for dissenters.
A former Kazakh prime minister, forced into exile in 1997, is dismissive of Blair's alleged efforts: 'He can offer all the advice he wants but you can't get better governance in Kazakhstan without changing the government.'
One service Blair performed for Nazarbayev was to appear in an hour-long video, a dreary neo-Stalinist panegyric of praise for the country's leader. In it he congratulates Nazarbayev for his 'toughness, subtlety and ingenuity' in taking the decisions to put his country on the right path.
The film features fawning interventions from Blair.
Our own reaction when we watched it was shame that our former Prime Minister was debasing himself in this way.
To be fair, Blair looks pinched and ill in the video and does not speak with his usual brio. He looks rather as though he hopes no one he knows will ever see the thing.
He looks ashamed. As he should be. The essential message of the video and all of Blair's other interventions in Kazakhstan is that Nazarbayev is the solution. Reformers in the country think that, on the contrary, he is the problem.
How much does Blair get for his support, endorsement and whatever confidential advice he gives the appalling old thug who runs Kazakhstan?
Our understanding is that he was paid £8 million for the first year of the consultancy and £8 million for the second year.
The Blair organisation was not helpful in quantifying the fee.
'We don't and have never confirmed value of contracts — it's commercially confidential information. So the figures bandied about are often wrong,' we were told by Blair's spokesman Rachel Grant.
But she did confirm the fee pays for 'the cost of running the project — including a team of advisers on the ground, who are experts in political, social and economic reform.'
She also agreed that the fee does provide a profit for Tony Blair Associates — not, she wanted to point out to us, to Tony Blair personally, but to his company. 'Profits go back into running the business,' was how she put it.
As we have seen, Blair's close relationship with Nazarbayev goes back to his Downing Street days. In 2001, he was instrumental in introducing Sir Dick Evans, the former chairman of UK defence firm BAE Systems, to Nazarbayev.
While Evans was in charge, BAE Systems was investigated for bribery in Saudi Arabia, until Blair put pressure on his Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, to stop the proceedings.
In 2006 Evans became chairman of the Kazakh state holding company, Samruk, which owns the state oil and gas company, the state uranium company, the national rail and postal services, the airline Air Astana and numerous financial groups.
Samruk, which has around £50 billion worth of assets, was set up by presidential decree and is today headed by Nazarbayev's son-in-law Timur Kulibayev.
He is the oligarch who in 2008 paid massively over the market rate for Sunninghill Park, Prince Andrew's former marital home in Berkshire. Today, Nazarbayev has also taken on the services of several of Blair's closest acolytes.
The president has retained the services of Jonathan Powell, Blair's former Downing Street chief of staff, as well as Portland Communications, run by Blair's former press officer Tim Allan, ably assisted by Allan's old boss Alastair Campbell. Blair put in a good word for his old cronies at Portland, who got the Kazak contract on his recommendation.
On his visits, he has also been accompanied by another of his erstwhile New Labour cronies, Peter Mandelson.
In 2011 Mandelson was hired to give two speeches at Samruk events. At one conference he lavished praise on the Kazak investment fund, saying: 'I want to stress a special role it played as a saviour of the world economy.'
Involved, too, is the international law firm DLA Piper, with whom Blair and his close ally Baroness Symons — also formerly a Downing Street staffer — did controversial business in Gaddafi's Libya.
And yet another player in Kazakhstan from the Blair ménage is his wife Cherie, whose legal firm Omnia Strategy is being paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for legal work by Kazakhstan's Ministry of Justice.
Omnia was hired to conduct a review of the country's 'bilateral investment treaties'.
The first stage of the review, which was expected to take as little as three months, was worth £120,000, sources have told the Sunday Telegraph.
A second phase of the project is understood to be worth a further £200,000 to £250,000 for another three to four months' work. Omnia Strategy also has an option to complete a third stage of the legal project for the Ministry of Justice.
Tony Blair's acceptance of the commission to assist Nazarbayev polish his image has been widely criticised. Opposition activists in Kazakhstan accuse him of having the 'blood of the people on your hands'.
Mike Harris is a former Labour political adviser who was a strong supporter of Blair when he was Prime Minister. Now working for the free speech organisation Index on Censorship, he feels a sharp sense of betrayal.
'For authoritarian regimes, any association with our politicians is hugely symbolic in helping them legitimise their rule within their countries,' he says. 'That Blair is involved is deeply depressing.'
Yet Kazakhstan's president is not the only despot who has Blair cheer-leading for him. He has also been fulsome about the dodgy leader of another former Soviet state, Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan — a man likened by American diplomats to Sonny Corleone, the hot-headed and violent mobster in the Godfather films.
Aliyev locks up critics, shuts down newspapers and is said to respond angrily when he perceives challenges to his authority or even minor affronts to his family's dignity.
Nominally, Azerbaijan is a democratic country. But in the last presidential election, in 2013, authorities released the results a full day before voting had even started.
Aliyev, who took over the presidency from his father ten years ago, was declared the landslide winner with 72.76 per cent of the votes — a tad down from his 76.84 per cent in 2003 and 87 per cent in 2008! But none of this seems to have bothered Blair, who travelled to Azerbaijan in 2009 and hailed its leader for 'a very positive and exciting vision for the future of the country'.
He made a speech paid for by Nizami Piriyev, a presidential ally and the owner of a methanol plant. The rumoured fee was £100,000.
Meanwhile, an organisation called the European Azerbaijan Society contributes to the Blairite coffers by helping fund Progress, a pressure group within the Labour Party designed to keep the Blairite flame alive. Its patron is Tony Blair.
Extracted from Blair Inc: The Man Behind The Mask by Francis Beckett, David Hencke and Nick Kochan, published by John Blake Publishing on March 19 at £20. To order a copy, call 0808 272 0808 or visit mailbookshop.co.uk (P&P free for a limited time).
Aliyev, who took over the presidency from his father ten years ago, was declared the landslide winner with 72.76 per cent of the votes — a tad down from his 76.84 per cent in 2003 and 87 per cent in 2008! But none of this seems to have bothered Blair, who travelled to Azerbaijan in 2009 and hailed its leader for 'a very positive and exciting vision for the future of the country'.
He made a speech paid for by Nizami Piriyev, a presidential ally and the owner of a methanol plant. The rumoured fee was £100,000.
Meanwhile, an organisation called the European Azerbaijan Society contributes to the Blairite coffers by helping fund Progress, a pressure group within the Labour Party designed to keep the Blairite flame alive. Its patron is Tony Blair.
Extracted from Blair Inc: The Man Behind The Mask by Francis Beckett, David Hencke and Nick Kochan, published by John Blake Publishing on March 19 at £20. To order a copy, call 0808 272 0808 or visit mailbookshop.co.uk (P&P free for a limited time).
HIS GROVELLING TO GADDAFI SICKENED BILLIONAIRE FRIEND
The confusion Blair creates with his business methods is typified by his contacts with the Libyan dictator, Colonel Gaddafi — as Tim Collins, billionaire founder of a Wall Street investment company and now an ex-friend of the former Prime Minister, discovered to his disgust and dismay.
In April 2009, two years after leaving office, Blair was holding secret talks with Gaddafi about the possible release from prison in the United Kingdom of the convicted Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.
Libya was threatening to cut all business links if Megrahi stayed in a British jail.
Blair, who flew to Libya at Gaddafi's expense — and in Gaddafi's private jet — invited Collins along.
Collins thought he was going in his capacity as a trustee of Blair's Faith Foundation to promote a campaign for anti-mosquito nets for children in Africa.
When he got there, he found Gaddafi eager to discuss investment to build beach resorts on the Libyan coast.
Mosquito nets were barely mentioned.
Collins was further surprised when Blair turned up with some people from JP Morgan, the major investment bank he advises, in tow. Blair's office was vague about what happened on this occasion, saying the meetings were 'primarily on the subject of Africa'.
But one of the notes Blair wrote about the meetings was written on the headed notepaper of the Quartet, the Middle East diplomacy group for which he is Special Envoy. So on whose behalf was Blair meeting Gaddafi? Was he discussing an African anti-malaria campaign? Or Middle East peace?
Or was he there to do deals for JP Morgan related to investment and oil? Too often his many different roles sit uneasily together.
Whatever the truth, Collins cringed at Blair's deferential attitude towards the dictator.
He himself thought Gaddafi quite mad and refused to do business with him.
Blair, however, seems to have had no qualms about an ever closer association with Gaddafi.
In an interview in 2010, a Gaddafi associate acknowledged that the dictator 'talks regularly to Blair as a friend' and 'consults him on many issues.'
Papers found in Tripoli after Gaddafi's overthrow in 2011 show that Blair held at least six private meetings with him in the three years after he left No 10 Downing Street.
Blair's involvement with Libya goes back to his days as Prime Minister, when he spotted the considerable commercial benefits to be gained from access to Libya's colossal reserves of oil and gas, as well as huge opportunities for foreign firms to renew its ancient infrastructure.
In seeking to take advantage of this, he was ably assisted by Sir Mark Allen, a former British spy who spent much of his operational career in the Middle East. He was head of MI6's counter-terrorism unit, which is alleged to have colluded in the use of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' to torture terror suspects in Libya.
In 2004 his bid to become head of MI6 failed and he retired from public service.
But Prime Minister Blair cleared him to take work immediately as a special adviser for the oil giant BP, despite rules that would normally have prevented a former civil servant from taking money from a large corporation so soon after retirement.
As Blair's premiership was coming to an end in 2007, Allen used his contacts in both the UK and Libya to resolve issues surrounding the release of Lockerbie bomber al-Megrahi.
This in turn enabled a deal in which BP announced it would return to operations in Libya after a 30-year absence.
Libya under Gaddafi turned out to be a natural place for Blair to exercise his entrepreneurial talent.
On behalf of British companies, he courted the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) and the National Oil Corporation (NOC).
Both the LIA and the NOC were massive and corrupt institutions with fabulous wealth. Regime figures describe Blair lobbying extensively for clients, and in return he intervened personally to aid the Gaddafi clan on several occasions.
He tried to persuade Oxford University to give a place to Saif, Gaddafi's son, and is thought to have been instrumental in the eventual decision of the LSE to admit him as a PhD student.
His relationship with Gaddafi continued right up to the dictator's fall.
During the Libyan Revolution, Blair telephoned Gaddafi twice on February 27, 2011, reportedly to ask him to stop the violent crackdown on his opponents.
Gaddafi might reasonably have expected a little help at the time of his greatest need, but that was the last time the two spoke, and a few weeks later Gaddafi was captured and slaughtered.
Perhaps Blair shed a tear for his old chum. Then again, perhaps he didn't.
DailyMail
