[ 2015-01-18 ]

Tony Blair

Blair quizzed over millions
TONY BLAIR is to be challenged by parliament to
come clean on his income and secretive financial
empire amid claims he stands to earn millions of
pounds advising the developers of a gas pipeline
backed by the despotic regime of Azerbaijan.

A parliamentary motion will be tabled this week
calling for greater scrutiny of prime ministers’
financial interests and work for foreign states
after they leave office.

Blair has avoided any requirement to reveal
details of his international consultancy work
because he is neither an MP nor a member of the
House of Lords.

Former prime ministers are required to seek advice
only for a period of two years after they leave
office on any appointments they wish to take up.

Blair clients have included Nursultan Nazarbayev,
the autocratic president of Kazakhstan, where the
former prime minister’s consultancy has been
paid an estimated £8m a year.

He has also accepted an advisory role for the gas
pipeline, which will run from Azerbaijan to
Europe. The Azerbaijan regime was criticised by
the US last month over its “crackdown on civil
society”.

A document drafted in support of the early day
motion claims Blair stands to earn millions of
pounds in advisory fees for work on the $45bn
pipeline project, which is based on information
from Azerbaijan. Blair’s office said the claims
regarding the advisory fees were inaccurate and a
“complete invention”. It declined to comment
on the money Blair would be paid.

Andrew Bridgen, the Conservative MP for Northwest
Leicestershire, said former prime ministers should
be bound for life by the seven principles of
public life, known as the Nolan principles, which
include accountability and openness. He is to
table an early day motion calling for greater
oversight of the work that prime ministers can
accept after leaving office.

“Tony Blair has embarked on a career of personal
enrichment and has blurred the lines between his
public and private interests,” he said. “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.”

Blair can still claim an allowance from the public
purse in connection with his public duties as a
former prime minister. In 2012-13, the most recent
year for which figures are available, he claimed
£115,000, which is the maximum allowed. All
former prime minsters are entitled to the
allowance.

The challenge to Blair over his burgeoning
financial empire comes as he faces acute
parliamentary scrutiny over his record in office.
He was summoned to appear before a parliamentary
committee last week over letters sent to fugitive
IRA suspects during his premiership saying they
were no longer wanted by police. Blair was
admonished by the committee for being “extremely
disrespectful” after initially saying he was too
busy to attend.

Since leaving office, Blair has created a business
and charitable empire spanning the globe. He has
dismissed reports that he is worth more £100m,
suggesting the figure is closer to £20m.

The Sunday Times revealed last year details of a
secret contract Blair had secured with a Saudi
Arabian oil firm, PetroSaudi, which stipulated
Tony Blair Associates would be paid a 2% success
fee for any deals it helped set up. The contract
also stated that Blair’s paid role should be
kept confidential.

Blair has created a complex corporate structure
which he admits is designed to avoid what he
considers would be unfair scrutiny of his clients.
One of his companies, Windrush Ventures, published
accounts revealing a turnover of £14.2m.
Blair’s office says the accounts for Windrush
and related entities “do not represent his
earnings or the earnings or the profit of his
business and are not referable to them”.

The pipeline from Azerbaijan to Italy is known as
the southern corridor project and is backed by BP
and Socar, the Azerbaijan state oil company. Blair
sits on the advisory panel with Peter Sutherland,
the chairman of Goldman Sachs. Sutherland is also
a former chairman of BP and visited Libya with
Blair in May 2007, when the oil company signed a
£450m exploration deal. The third member of the
panel is Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the former German
foreign minister.

A BP spokesman said the southern corridor advisory
panel would advise on political, environmental and
reputational challenges during the construction of
the pipeline, which is due to be completed by
2019. BP said the 11 companies involved in the
project wanted “an external panel they could all
trust”.

Hugh Williamson, director of the Europe and
Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said
Blair might consider he was not technically
advising the Azerbaijan regime, but it was
“dodging the issue” on human rights because
Socar was wholly state-owned.

“In 2014, there was a major round-up in
Azerbaijan of important leaders of independent
organisations who were critical of the government
who have been put in prison,” he said.

Williamson said Blair should speak out strongly on
human rights abuses in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan
— or not accept work from those countries.

The document drafted to support Bridgen’s early
day motion states that Blair has a two-year
contract for the consortium, paid at a rate of
£6m a year.

A spokesman for Blair said: “The case for the
pipeline has been made by the UK government and
the EU on many occasions because of its importance
for energy security and diversity of supply. The
advisory panel is jointly funded by the four
southern corridor projects and the companies
involved in them. We do not disclose Mr Blair’s
earnings but the figures you suggest are risible
and a complete invention.”

Source - The Times(UK)

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