Tony Blair profits from advising bloody Kazakhstan dictatorship

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Tony Blair, the 123 million dollar man

12 February 2014

Dubbed the 123 million dollar man, it has emerged that the former British prime minister Tony Blair has racked up a staggering fortune since leaving office in 2007.

He is now so wealthy that he’s set to be included on the prestigious annual Sunday Times Rich List.

His name will reportedly be added to this year’s roll call of Britain’s one thousand most minted people, joining the likes of billionaires Richard Branson and Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich.

Political writer Phil Scullion said the earnings of a man dubbed a “champagne socialist” would be “hard to swallow” for some.

Blair, now 60, reportedly earned most of his cash through property deals, consultancy and advisory work.

And it seems his son Nicky is following in his dad’s footsteps when it comes to filling up the bank account.

In November, it was reported that the 27-year-old soccer agent raked in 10% from a 10.7 million dollar deal.

From daily The Guardian in Britain:

Tony Blair advises Kazakh president on publicity after killing of protesters

Former British PM criticised for suggesting strategy following Zhanaozen incident in which police shot dead 15 civilians

Haroon Siddique

Sunday 24 August 2014 19.49 BST

Tony Blair‘s role advising countries with poor human rights records has come under scrutiny again after he gave Kazakhstan‘s president advice on how to avoid his image being tarnished by the killing of 15 civilian protesters by police.

In a letter to Nursultan Nazarbeyev, Blair told the autocratic ruler that the December 2011 deaths, “tragic though they were, should not obscure the enormous progress that Kazakhstan has made”. Blair advised Nazarbeyev that when dealing with the western media, he should tackle the events in Zhanaozen, when police opened fire on protesters, including oil workers demanding higher wages, “head-on”.

In the letter, obtained by the Sunday Telegraph he also suggested passages to be inserted into a speech the president was giving at the University of Cambridge aimed at counteracting any bad publicity. One read: “By all means make your points and I assure you we’re listening. But give us credit for the huge change of a positive nature we have brought about”.

The former Labour leader’s consultancy, Tony Blair Associates, set up in the capital, Astana, in October 2011, signing a multi- million pound deal to advise Kazakhstan’s leadership on good governance, just months after Nazarbeyev was controversially re-elected with 96% of the vote and weeks before the massacre.

The government blamed the opposition for events in Zhanaozen, jailing alleged ringleader Vladimir Kozlov amid an international outcry and closing his party.

Activists say Blair’s appointment has produced no change for the better or advance of democratic rights. In its World Report 2014, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the country’s “poor human rights record continued to deteriorate in 2013”. It said torture remained common and referred to restrictions on free speech, dissent and religious worship.

Hugh Williamson, director of the HRW’s Europe and Central Asia division, accused the former prime minister of acting as “a spin doctor for how to best manage the fallout from the massacre,” rather than seeking to effect change. “This letter shows that Blair really has no shame in terms of his work, with respect to Kazakhstan in particular,” said Williamson.

Blair and his companies have been awarded a string of multimillion consultancy contracts with private corporations, dictatorships and regimes, including Kuwait, the UAE and Colombia. In June, a group of former British ambassadors and political figures joined a campaign to call for Blair to be sacked as Middle East envoy, citing, among other things, his “blurring the lines between his public position as envoy” and his private business dealings in the region.

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David Cameron became the first serving British prime minister to visit Kazakhstan in July last year.