How Tony Blair Inc spent £57 million in four years
Analysis of business accounts shows just how expensive former PM's life as an international fixer has become
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By Robert Mendick, Chief Reporter
8:55AM GMT 11 Jan 2015
He criss-crosses the globe in private jets, rents offices in a townhouse in one of London's most exclusive squares and stays in some of the world's finest hotels.
But Tony Blair's life as an international fixer has become a costly business.
Just how expensive can now be disclosed – for an analysis of Mr Blair's business accounts shows the former prime minister and his advisers and consultants have run up expenses and salaries totalling around £57 million in just four years – equivalent to £350,000 a year for each of his staff.
Running Blair Inc does not come cheap.
The Telegraph examined accounts for Mr Blair's complex network of companies set up following his departure from Downing Street in 2007, and which channel money for Tony Blair Associates, the umbrella organisation for Mr Blair's various commercial interests.
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Last week, Mr Blair filed accounts for six companies and partnerships registered with Companies House. What they show is a consultancy business spending a fortune on travel, hotels, rent and salaries.
Mr Blair insists he is worth only £10 million, but the accounts suggest he runs a thriving business worth far more than that.
Investigations show that Mr Blair has divided his commercial activities into two broad groupings: one a consultancy which advises governments around the world, funded through a group of companies called Windrush Ventures; and another which advises companies and sovereign wealth funds through the trading arm Firerush Ventures.
According to the latest accounts, Windrush Ventures employs 37 staff at its headquarters in Grosvenor Square, London, and in such far-flung countries as Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Peru, Colombia, Brazil and Kuwait. It requires constant travel between London and its satellite offices.
Windrush Ventures Ltd, a company set up to run the business, spent almost £13 million in the 12 months to March 31 last year, paying wages, air fares and subsistence for staff, including Mr Blair. It also spends £550,000 a year renting the London headquarters. Windrush paid just less than £300,000 in corporation tax, on gross profits reduced by the large expenses bill. Its post-tax profits were just over £800,000.
In the previous three years, it spent £35 million on ''administrative expenses'', although details of this cost were not disclosed.
The money Mr Blair earns from Windrush cannot be determined because he hides its income in another entity he set up on leaving Downing Street called Windrush Ventures Limited Partnership. As a limited partnership, it is under no obligation to file accounts with Companies House. What it does do is pay a fee to Windrush Ventures Ltd for its services in running Mr Blair's business.
Mr Blair employs the same structure with Firerush Ventures, the part of Blair Inc that offers advice to companies and investment funds such as Mubadala, the sovereign wealth fund owned by Abu Dhabi's ruling family.
Firerush, for example, was at one stage being paid about $65,000 (£40,000) a month for strategic advice for a Saudi Arabian oil company linked to the Saudi ruling family. The fee included introducing the company to investors in China, where Mr Blair has also been a frequent visitor.
Clients of Firerush pay their fees into Firerush Ventures Limited Partnership, which ultimately pays a management fee to Firerush Ventures Limited.
Last year, Firerush Ventures Ltd was paid £2.4 million to manage that arm of Mr Blair's business. But the scale of the fees paid into the Limited Partnership also remains hidden from public view. The total £57 million figure consists of around £48 million of "administrative expenses" to Windrush and an estimated £8.5 million in "management services" to Firerush.
A senior accountant who studied Mr Blair's accounts last week said: "He is rather artfully putting his income into a partnership that has no requirement to file public accounts. You can never get to the bottom of what his income is because it always goes into an entity that has to file nowhere other than with HM Revenue & Customs."
The accountant went on: "The expenditure is enormous. If he has 37 staff and a wage bill of £2.7 million then that leaves £10 million on other expenses.
"That is an awful lot of travel. It is a huge sum of money. The expenses are incredible."
Mr Blair has taken to travelling the world in a private jet, preferring to use a £30 million Bombardier Global Express, which he leases on a regular basis and which has been dubbed Blair Force One.
The jet can comfortably accommodate his sizeable entourage, including personal assistants and Metropolitan Police close protection officers paid for by the British taxpayer. Mr Blair will often stay in the world's smartest hotels, including the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, where suites typically cost £5,000 a night.
But Mr Blair's staff also need their travel and accommodation paid for. Dr Andreas Baumgartner, for example, an Austrian lawyer and a partner in Tony Blair Associates, is based in Abu Dhabi.
In April, he turned up in Kyzylorda, an obscure city in the Kazakh desert, where he met Krymbek Kusherbayev, the regional governor. Kyzylorda is rich in oil fields, and China especially has invested heavily in the region.
Last week, Mr Blair's office issued a statement insisting that "the financial results released today present the operating costs of the businesses, and additional sums that may be held back in corporate reserves for investment in future years.
"Mr Blair is a UK taxpayer and pays full personal tax on all his earnings worldwide."
A spokesman disputed the £57 million figure.
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The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
When the white man came we had the land and they had the bibles; now they have the land and we have the bibles.
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The Voice of the Poor, the Weak and Powerless.
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