Golden Tony's millions

Kohoutek

First he sets up a bizarrely complicated serious of financial structures:

A little-known loophole in UK company law is being used by Tony Blair to keep his finances secret, the Guardian can disclose.

Blair would normally have to publish company accounts detailing the millions flowing into his various commercial ventures since he stepped down from office in 2007.

But he has set up a complicated artificial structure which avoids the normal rule. In effect, he is getting the benefits of running a British company without the drawbacks of unwelcome publicity.

Thanks to a gap in the Whitehall regulations, this entity is not required to publish any accounts. Such partnerships must normally disclose figures, or face criminal penalties.

Blair sidestepped the rules by inserting a second partnership as one of the notional partners, in a way the regulations do not cover.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/17/mystery-tony-blairs-money-solved

Then he rakes in the millions, including to oil firms operating in Iraq:

Tony Blair waged an extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq.

The former Prime Minister tried to keep the public in the dark over his dealings with South Korean oil firm UI Energy Corporation. Mr Blair - who has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Street in June 2007 - also went to great efforts to keep hidden a £1million deal advising the ruling royal family in Iraq's neighbour Kuwait.

The committee said yesterday that Mr Blair had taken a paid job advising a consortium of investors led by UI Energy in August 2008. The exact nature of the deal is unknown, but UI Energy is one of the biggest investors in Iraq's oil-rich Kurdistan region, which became semi-autonomous in the wake of the Iraq war.

Last night Tory MP Douglas Carswell said of Mr Blair's links to UI Energy Corporation: 'This doesn't just look bad, it stinks.

'It seems that the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has been in the pay of a very big foreign oil corporation and we have been kept in the dark about it. Even now we do not know what he was paid or what the company got out of it. We need that information now. 'This is revolving door politics at its worst. It's not as if Mr Blair has even stepped back from politics, because he is still politically active in the Middle East [As Special Envoy].

Mr Blair is also an adviser to JP Morgan Chase, the US investment bank, and Zurich Financial Services, a Swiss firm.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259030/Tony-Blairs-secret-dealings-South-Korean-oil-firm-UI-Energy-Corp.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/7473553/Tony-Blair-takes-on-jobs-advising-South-Korean-oil-firm-and-Kuwaiti-Government.html

Oil firms in Iraq? Golden Tony is taking the !!!! out of the great British public I fear.

cogito

His pal Gordon will be next.

Nosht

On past history, really not surprising.

N.

drc

Evil man :mad:.

moggylover

drc wrote: »

Evil man :mad:.

It's the system that is evil: he's just an expert at working it;)

moggylover

Nosht wrote: »

On past history, really not surprising.

N.

I would draw your attention to the first line of your siggy and suggest he is just taking your advice:D:D

torontoboy45

£20m in less than 3 yrs - nice work if you can get it, but turning a few quid after a failed political career is nothing new; a fair proportion of thatcher's cabinet helped themselves to mouth-watering directorships of co.s they helped to privatise.

thatch herself minted it on the lecture circuit ( although IIRC most of the proceeds went to the Thatcher Foundation ).

but £20m in just 3yrs!?! he has been a busy bee, buzzing around energy firms and investment banks, giving speeches (people actually pay to listen to drivel?!?) and writing books nobody would want to read.

for me, his New Labour invention amounted to the biggest multi-faceted con trick in modern UK political history.

I wish him all the luck he so richly deserves.

torontoboy45

btw, I rarely pay much attention to point-scoring criticism but on this occasion carswell is right: blair's hiding of the truth stinks to high heaven.

Kohoutek

It's disturbing how close the similarities are between successful politicians and confidence tricksters - our dear old Tony is a prime example.

moggylover

Kohoutek wrote: »

It's disturbing how close the similarities are between successful politicians and confidence tricksters - our dear old Tony is a prime example.

But, tbf, is that not the fault of the public and the media? We want people who "look the part" and the media trash anyone who might be in any way sincere and committed if they do not "fit" the mold.

We SHOULD be voting on political values and policies. Instead many end up voting because they do (or do not) "like" a particular politician and often only because of what they have gleaned from scanning tabloid media.

Because of that we get the shallow Blair and Cameron types who can look presentable on camera but have little fibre to them and the politicians who might have had something worthwhile to bring to Government end up back-seated to an ego:(

Kohoutek

moggylover wrote: »

But, tbf, is that not the fault of the public and the media? We want people who "look the part" and the media trash anyone who might be in any way sincere and committed if they do not "fit" the mold.

We SHOULD be voting on political values and policies. Instead many end up voting because they do (or do not) "like" a particular politician and often only because of what they have gleaned from scanning tabloid media.

Because of that we get the shallow Blair and Cameron types who can look presentable on camera but have little fibre to them and the politicians who might have had something worthwhile to bring to Government end up back-seated to an ego:(

I completely agree.

I'm not sure when this process started, but it seemed to be around when Blair came in - he had some very good media contacts after all and an army of spin doctors. I suppose it's part of the celebrity culture too, it's been extended to politicians.

Are we just dumber as a society? The selection of David Cameron over David Davis was pretty significant, when the Tory grass roots decided to adopt a style over substance politician to compete with Blair. I suppose you can't blame them - they had three leaders that represented traditional Tory values and talked about policies, not platitudes in opposition under New Labour, and they all failed. I suppose you could attribute their failure in a large part to the media too - they were pretty compliant towards New Labour when Blair was in power, the Tories were presented as an obsolete, discredited party full of old men. So they didn't really have a choice but to start imitating New Labour and its methods.