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Tony Blair accused of seeking $45m UAE contract while working as peace envoy

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Tony Blair is accused of ‘relentlessly cashing in on contacts,’ earning up to $90m from consultancy while working on Israel-Palestine talks

Blair is highest-earning former UK leader in history thanks to consulting work with Gulf states, new book alleges (Photo: Marc Müller/cc)

Blair is highest-earning former UK leader in history thanks to consulting work with Gulf states, new book alleges (Photo: Marc Müller/cc)

by Middle East Eye

Multi-million dollar deals with various states in the Middle East have helped Tony Blair amass a fortune thought to be worth an estimated $90m, claims a book published this month.

Blair accepted the job of Middle East peace envoy with the Quartet (the United Nations, the US, the EU and Russia) on the same day as he stepped down from office in 2007.

The Quartet was established with the aim of finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and as Special Envoy Blair has travelled extensively in the region, most recently to Gaza last month.

His trips to the region have also seen him strike lucrative deals with the region’s governments for consultancy work.

One of the biggest of these, revealed by the Sunday Times, was a proposed contract with the UAE worth up to $45m.

Tony Blair Associates, an umbrella organisation founded to coordinate the diplomat’s various consultancy groups, offered its services to the UAE’s Foreign Affairs Ministry in a five-year commercial partnership.

A 25-document about the September 2014 deal obtained by the Sunday Times states that “there is nowhere in the world right now where we could not work or provide the necessary contacts either politically or commercially, should we want to”.

Blair has worked in partnership with various governments whose human rights records have been criticised by international monitors. In 2013, he offered public relations advice to the president of Guinea after security forces shot protesters during anti-government clashes, killing nine people.

The contract with the UAE was proposed while Blair was working as Middle East peace envoy. He is now facing calls to step down from the position of envoy over allegations of a conflict of interest.

Andrew Bridgen, a Conservative MP who has called for former prime ministers to be bound by tighter regulations, accused Blair of “relentlessly cashing in his contacts” while the Middle East is “on fire”.

“This is damaging to Britain’s reputation, and he should now stand down as the Middle East peace envoy.”

Blair’s office responded to the allegations by saying that the document was “out of date” and insisting that he would never engage in paid work that caused a conflict of interest with his work as peace envoy.

“The UAE is not a member of the Quartet. Tony Blair has undertaken other paid work in the Gulf, but not in respect of anything that is linked to what he does unpaid for the Quartet.”

The UAE does not recognise the state of Israel, one of the parties in the Quartet’s peace efforts, and the countries have no official diplomatic or economic ties.

However, a recent investigation by Middle East Eye revealed that an Israeli-owned company has become responsible for a huge surveillance system that protects critical infrastructure in the Gulf kingdom.

Blair’s other work with Gulf States includes a $40m four-year contract for consultancy work with the Emir of Kuwait and a deal to provide the government of Abu Dhabi, the largest emirate in the UAE, with “global strategic advice” at a cost of up to $1.5m a year.

According to Blair Inc, a book by Francis Beckett and David Hencke, to be released this month, he also arranged a covert contract in 2010 with Saudi oil company PetroSaudi.

The deal, according to the book, saw Blair arrange introductions to contacts in China, and was reportedly worth $60,000 a month. He also supposedly earned 2 percent commission on any deal resulting from the introductions.

Blair has also said he is “happy to help” Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, though he denies working as a formal advisor to Sisi’s government, which launched a military takeover of the country in 2013.

An alleged leak that emerged last week claimed to feature Egyptian officials arranging for a visit by an Emirati delegation, who were “bringing along Tony Blair”.

The purported leak, said to have been recorded in early 2014, appears to indicate that Blair and the Emirati officials spoke with high-level Egyptian politicians, including the president, the head of intelligence and the foreign minister, in “unofficial meetings”.

‘Tell us who pays you’: Tony Blair pressured over alleged paymasters

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Tony Blair pictured at the Munich Security Conference 2014. (Photo: Marc Müller/cc)

Tony Blair pictured at the Munich Security Conference 2014. (Photo: Marc Müller/cc)

by RT

Conservative MPs will launch a campaign on Monday to force Tony Blair to reveal how much he earns and who pays him.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen is tabling an Early Day Motion (EDM) in the House of Commons, demanding that former prime ministers be bound by the same rules of transparency and oversight as serving politicians.

While the EDM is unlikely to be passed by parliament, it follows growing concern over Blair’s work for authoritarian governments and controversial corporations.

Blair’s business transactions have been linked to the governments of Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan – all three of which are widely known for their human rights abuses.

“Tony Blair has embarked on a career of personal enrichment and has blurred the lines between his public and private interests,” Bridgen told The Sunday Times.

“No other former prime minister has gone to work for other sovereign states. Mr Blair is still in public life, but is not bound by its principles, and that needs to be changed,” he added.

Blair, who was last year awarded GQ’s Philanthropy Award, has come under intense scrutiny as he has been linked to a string of authoritarian regimes and less-than-ethical companies.

A consortium of energy companies, including BP, hired him last year to work on a new gas pipeline which will go from Azerbaijan to Italy via Turkey.

The project has come under fierce criticism for the environment destruction it may cause and for the wealth it will give Azerjaijan’s controversial leader, Ilham Aliyev.

Aliyev, whose government has imprisoned bloggers and journalists, was compared to a mafia don from The Godfather by US diplomats in a Wikileaks cable published in 2010.

The former prime minister’s consultancy, Tony Blair Associates, reportedly earns £7 million a year for advising Kazakhstan’s strongman president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Nazarbayev’s government has been accused of human rights abuses after its courts forcibly closed much of the country’s independent media and his troops massacred dozens of striking oil workers at a peaceful protest in Zhanaozen, in western Kazakhstan, in December 2011.

As if the list of unscrupulous customers wasn’t long enough already, Tony Blair Associates has also been linked to a Saudi Arabian oil company founded by the son of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.

A leaked contract, which emerged last November, showed that Blair had been hired by PetroSaudi to help facilitate a deal between the oil firm and Chinese state officials.

Blair, who also serves as a Special Envoy for the Middle East Quartet, was reportedly paid £41,000 a month to carry out these duties, and took a 2 percent cut from each successfully orchestrated deal.

Since leaving office in 2007, Blair has amassed millions of pounds in fees collected through his consultancy firm.

Some have speculated that the former prime minister’s personal fortune could amount to £100 million, but he has implied it is closer to £20 million.

This figure will raise eyebrows, however, as it is reported his personal expenses run into the millions.

Blair’s private jet alone is worth £30 million and reportedly costs £7,000 for every hour it is in the air.

Since leaving government Blair has also claimed a taxpayer-funded allowance for ex-prime ministers, in addition to other state subsidies.

A Freedom of Information request in 2012 revealed Blair was costing the taxpayer £400,000 a year in pensions, public duties allowances and security costs.

Uproar as Tony Blair given 'Global Legacy' award from renowned charity

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‘We consider this award inappropriate and a betrayal to Save the Children’s founding principles and values,’ charge Save the Children staff.

Tony Blair pictured at the Munich Security Conference 2014. (Photo: Marc Müller/cc)

Tony Blair pictured at the Munich Security Conference 2014. (Photo: Marc Müller/cc)

by Sarah Lazare, Common Dreams

International charity Save the Children is facing uproar, including from internal staff, for granting the “global legacy award” to former UK Prime Minister and Iraq War architect Tony Blair.

The award was given to Blair by the U.S. arm of the organization at a gala in New York City last week. Save the Children, which claims “protecting children from harm” as a key mission, lauded Blair for his alleged role heading anti-poverty initiatives at the 2005 Group of Eight summit in Scotland and for his “continued commitment to Africa.”

The move unleashed a torrent of criticism, including a petition, with over 90,000 signatures so far, calling on Save the Children to revoke the award on the basis that Blair is seen by many as “the cause of the deaths of countless children in the Middle East with damning allegations relating to his role as Middle East envoy and businesses dealings with autocratic rulers and others in the region.”

Critiques erupted across social media platforms, including Twitter:

Within Save the Children, an internal letter denouncing the award as “morally reprehensible” gathered nearly 200 signatures, including from some senior staff members, the Guardian reports.

“We consider this award inappropriate and a betrayal to Save the Children’s founding principles and values,” the letter states. “Management staff in the region were not communicated with nor consulted about the award and were caught by surprise with this decision.”

Staff warned that the award threatens the credibility of Save the Children, given that figures at the head of the charity have close ties with Blair, including John Forsyth, UK chief executive for Save the Children, who was a special adviser to Blair for three years.

Krista Armstrong, global media manager for the charity, reportedly told theGuardian last week that Save the Children has received a “high volume of complaints and negative reactions to rewarding the award.”

Blair was also awarded as “philanthropist of the year” by GQ in September—a decision that was also met with widespread criticism and shock.

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