The ABCC won’t say how lucrative her work as chairman is. Nor will Liz Symons. Nor does she stress her role in creating these ‘valuable business opportunities’ by cheerleading for the war.
She is also ‘international consultant’ for Blenheim Capital Services Limited, which assists and facilitates, among other things, defence, aerospace, oil, gas and construction contracts and projects, much of that in the Middle East.
It is a subsidiary of Blenheim Capital Partners Ltd, based offshore in Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, and has offices in Washington, DC, Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Malaysia. The company says it has worked on projects valued at more than £12 billion. It has recently played a key role in a defence contract with the Malaysian government.
Neither Blenheim nor Liz Symons will say how lucrative her relationship with Blenheim is. But Blenheim also has links with DLA Piper, for which Symons also acts as ‘international consultant’. In January 2010 Blenheim Capital Services appointed Sir Nigel Knowles (a member of the LSE Ideas Board, naturally) as chairman and non-executive director. Knowles is also managing partner of DLA Piper.
Again, neither DLA Piper nor Liz Symons will say how lucrative her position as ‘international consultant’ is or precisely what the role entails.
Symons is also a consultant to Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC), the huge construction company based in the Lebanon with extensive interests across the Middle East, including Iraq and Libya. The company built the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and pops up repeatedly in the Blair story, as we shall see. Symons will not say how much the consultancy work is worth. CCC could not be contacted.
She was also at the centre of a conflict-of-interest row when she accepted a lucrative role with UK investment bank MerchantBridge, which has made millions from contracts in postwar Iraq, after she left government.
The London School of Economics’ ‘Ideas Board’ calls on the university’s ‘intellectual resources’ to study international affairs. The LSE was heavily criticised in 2011 for a ‘chapter of failures’ in its links with the Gaddafi regime, including accepting a £1.5 million donation from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi six weeks after the institution awarded him a PhD.18
Immediately after the fall of Gaddafi, the British firm Heritage Oil bought major shareholdings in Libya. Heritage Oil is owned by Tony Buckingham, who is suspected of links to mercenary operations in Africa and the Middle East. The Libyan National Transitional Council – which ruled from 2011 to 2013 – appointed a new oil minister who, to the dismay of revolutionaries, announced new contracts with international oil firms.
Blair’s efforts, with the aid of Rashid, Allen and Symons, in opening Libya’s markets to foreign investors during the time of Gaddafi, has deprived the post-revolution government of the national assets needed to rebuild its infrastructure and create a peaceful country. In fact, Gaddafi’s fall has left a country at war with itself, warlords fighting for territory and power.
Domestically, as well, old partnerships have not shown their capacity to survive the rigours of Blair’s ‘private’ life. Old friends seeking to build personal wealth find circumstances changing and loyalties shifting.
Notes
1 Ken Silverstein, The Secret World of Oil (Verso, 2014)
2 Ibid.
3 Daily Telegraph, 1 October 2011: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
politics/tony-blair/8801699/Libyan-link-
oligarch-funded-Blair-initiative.html
4 Daily Telegraph, 4 August 2013: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
politics/tony-blair/10220684/Tony-Blair-helped-
Colonel-Gaddafi-in-1bn-legal-row.html
5 www.politico.com, 21 February 2011: http://www.politico.com/blogs/
laurarozen/0211/Among_Libyas_lobbyists.html?showall
6 Time, 18 May 2006: http://www.time.com/time/world/article
/0,8599,1195852,00.html#ixzz2Zl24q2Jq
7 Daily Mail, 6 September 2009: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
news/article-1211483/Ex-spy-BPs-Lawrence-
Arabia.html#ixzz1EtrE0VMc
8 http://www.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/people/bios/allenMark.aspx
9 Independent, 6 September 2011: http://www.independent.co.uk/
news/world/africa/libyan-rebel-leader-says-mi6-
knew-he-was-tortured-2349778.html
10 The Guardian, 23 October 2013: http://www.theguardian.com/global/
2013/oct/23/abdel-hakim-belhaj-justice-llibyan-dissident
11 The Guardian, 4 September 2011: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/
sep/04/mark-allen-mi6-libya-profile; Daily Telegraph, 22 July 2010: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/
northamerica/usa/7905061/BPs-MI6-adviser-
called-before-Senate-over-Libya-deal.html; Independent, 6 September 2011: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/libyan-
rebel-leader-says-mi6-knew-he-was-tortured-2349778.html
12 Daily Mail, 6 September 2009: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
news/article-1211483/Ex-spy-BPs-
Lawrence-Arabia.html#ixzz2khf2wBBc
13 Daily Telegraph, 4 August 2013: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
news/politics/tony-blair/10220684/Tony-Blair-
helped-Colonel-Gaddafi-in-1bn-legal-row.html
14 Daily Telegraph, 29 January 2010: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
earth/environment/climatechange/7054986/Tony-
Blairs-climate-change-project-paid-for-by-Oleg-
Deripaska-oligarch-who-entertained-Lord-
Mandelson-and-George-Osborne.html
15 Daily Telegraph, 24 September 2011: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
news/politics/tony-blair/8787074/Tony-Blairs-
six-secret-visits-to-Col-Gaddafi.html
16 The Week, 1 December 2011: http://www.theweek.co.uk/uk-news/
saif-gaddafi/43196/blair-government-
pressured-oxford-admit-saif-gaddafi; Daily Telegraph, 30 November 2011: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/
universityeducation/8926790/Blairs-
government-tried-to-get-Oxford-place-
for-Saif-Gaddafi.html; www.narkive.com,
http://uk.politics.misc.narkive.com/SoJRL3QZ/
education-education-education-tony-blair-tried-
to-get-saif-gaddafi-into-oxford
17 Time, 18 May 2006: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599, 1195852,00.html
18 www.bbc.co.uk, http://www.bbc.co.uk/
news/education-15966132
CHAPTER EIGHT
BLAIR AND MANDELSON: THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
‘If you look at Mandelson’s known clients a lot of them are close to “tame oligarchs” – people who might be fearful of [Vladimir] Putin [of Russia] but support him. This has enabled him to scoop up business in the area that Blair cannot do business.’
– A FORMER LABOUR CABINET MINISTER.
One of Tony Blair’s closest friends was Peter (now Lord) Mandelson. He is credited by Blair himself as one of the three architects of New Labour. As Blair wrote to him when he resigned from his first government over the home-loan scandal in 1998, ‘It is no exaggeration to say that without your support and advice, we would never have built New Labour.’
Now, nearly two decades on, the two longstanding friends are no longer that close and it is Mandelson who is distancing himself from Blair, not vice versa. Sources say that Peter is becoming increasingly disillusioned with Tony’s pursuit of wealth by advising repugnant dictatorships and corrupt regimes with terrible human-rights records. He is said to believe that these actions are toxic for the New Labour project, since it puts its principal architect in an appalling light.
One source suggested that Mandelson had returned to his old tricks of secretly briefing journalists – but this time against Blair for seeking to advise the new authoritarian Egyptian government of General el-Sisi. Mandelson had previously supported the deposed Egyptian President Mubarak. A report in the Telegraph revealed the connection.1 It said that he wrot
e to the Egyptian ambassador in London, Hatem Seif El Nasr, who contacted the then-Minister of Foreign Trade in Cairo, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, on 31 January 2011 outlining Mandelson’s offer.
El Nasr’s letter, written in Arabic and bearing the Egyptian government seal, stated that Lord Mandelson was
establishing a new international company of his own for economic advisory to render support and economic consulting for businessmen and enterprise.
The new company aims at renewing and reintroducing the commercial franchises to new communities, and helping grand agencies and organisations to accomplish new goals and make use and adapt with the globalisation consequences on these companies.
The article also points out that
On Feb 1, Lord Mandelson wrote to the Financial Times in support of the Egyptian regime as it clung on to power in the face of mass demonstrations and violent clashes which left at least 846 dead. Mubarak was ousted on Feb 11, 2011.
In the letter, he defended ‘reformers’ in the regime, including the president’s son, Gamal, saying the president was a ‘civilian façade’ for the security forces while his son was ‘the leading voice in favour of change’.
Now Blair is advising el-Sisi, who overthrew the elected Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood as reported in the Guardian.2 The same article quotes a source as saying,
A former close political associate argued that the ex-prime minister’s role in advising the Egyptian regime would cause ‘terrible damage to him, the rest of us and New Labour’s legacy’. My source tells me that person was Peter Mandelson, furious that his own plan to aid reformers in Mubarak regime had been upstaged by a deal with Blair three years later.
Others speak of Mandelson resenting that he never got one of the top jobs in a Blair cabinet because he felt he had to sacrifice himself to save the government from embarrassment – particularly with his second resignation over whether he had helped the Hinduja brothers obtain a British passport.
What is officially clear is that the main lobbying and strategic-advice company behind Peter Mandelson’s wealth, Global Counsel, wants to distance itself from Tony Blair Associates, the driving force of Blair’s business activities. And that is even though it employs some ex-Blairites itself.
Maree Glass, chief operating officer of Global Counsel, put the difference clearly when this question was put to her: ‘As you’ll see from our research we help our clients understand global political and regulatory trends. You should also note, as has been explained to many journalists, that Global Counsel does not work for governments.’
The big question is whether such a rift is motivated by genuine anger that Blair has moved from his original New Labour project just to make money; jealousy that he has been more successful than Mandelson; or a row generated by rival business strategies clashing like Titans across the globe. What is obvious is that there are similarities in their operations, lifestyles and some of the structures of their different organisations.
Mandelson has also, like Blair, never shied away from wanting to be wealthy. As he said in a famous quote, he was ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes.’
More recently, in an age of austerity for the masses, he has tried to row back. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in 2012 after the publication in Davos of a think-tank report on the future of globalisation, Mandelson said, ‘I don’t think I would say that now. Why? Because amongst other things we’ve seen that globalisation has not generated the rising incomes for all.’
Mandelson’s Global Counsel does strategic lobbying and is backed by the international communications giant WPP.
‘The company will focus on establishing a client base among companies with global ambitions in the new emerging markets, as well as forming partnerships in the developed world with businesses who want to move into the new high-growth economies,’ said a WPP press release on 9 December 2012.
WPP was set up by Sir Martin Sorrell in 1985 (its original title was Wired and Plastic Products Ltd) and is now an international marketing company employing 170,000 people worldwide. It includes brand advertising names such as JWT (J. Walter Thompson), Ogilvy and Mather, Young and Rubicon and lesser known ones in Latin America such as Gringo, as well as having a stake in Today Advertising in Burma. Its parent company is now in the offshore tax haven in Jersey, though it moved its HQ back to the UK from Ireland in 2013.
Sorrell is a somewhat controversial businessman who has defended huge salaries for top executives (his was £6.77 million in 2011, up from £4.23m in 2010). His total package, according to 2103 accounts, was worth £29.9 million; this includes his salary, pension, short-term and long-term incentives and benefits including a company car, private health insurance and a housing allowance. This obviously fits in well with Mandelson’s definition of being ‘relaxed about people getting filthy rich’. His peerage and his only two government posts, ambassador for British business and membership of a government advisory committee on management excellence, all came during Blair’s first term of office. He also has a link with Bernie Ecclestone – the man who controversially donated £1 million to New Labour under Tony Blair just at the point when the government was looking at banning tobacco advertising on motorsports – as he is a non-executive director of Formula One. WPP employed people with long-term links to both Blair and to Mandelson in Whitehall.
Global Counsel was founded by Mandelson. Benjamin Wegg-Prosser (his old special adviser in Whitehall) became its managing partner. He has recruited former senior civil servants from the business department to work with him at the lobbying company and one of them, Stephen Amos, became a partner in March 2013. The company’s latest filed accounts for 2013 show that it has assets of just under £1 million.
Mandelson’s financial arrangements and his business dealings ape Blair: convoluted, secretive and aimed to avoid public scrutiny. He has two companies – one for his personal finances and another for his business activities. Both hide details of his income. What is interesting is that the structure of his companies, while not as obtuse as the structure set up by Blair to cover his business dealings, still prevents people from finding out his clients and sources of income.
He has also resisted all attempts by the House of Lords to make him disclose his clients in its register of interests, claiming he is providing strategic advice, not acting as a lobbyist, which would require him to declare them. When this was challenged, he said he would still not declare the clients because his business was part of remunerated employment. And so far he has got away with this.
The first company is Willbury. It has two directors, Mandelson himself and his longstanding Brazilian life partner Reinaldo da Silva. But Mandelson is the sole shareholder, suggesting that the money that comes into the firm is entirely from him. The company takes advantage of all the ploys to hide wealth and maintain privacy. It has to file only abbreviated accounts – so none of the details of the fees he receives have to be disclosed, whether it is for his speeches or his book.
His accountants are MHA MacIntyre Hudson. This is an old-established but rapidly growing company acquiring firms through a series of aggressive mergers, with international clients.
Mandelson channels all the money he makes from his speeches and trips he has to declare to Parliament into this company. In 2012, most of his speeches were to bankers and investors such as the London Metal Exchange, Barclays Capital and the Asset Based Finance Association. These have to be declared in the House of Lords register of interests. His latest entry in 2015 does not include payments for any speeches.
The accounts show that his income has been substantial. Over the two years 2010–11 and 2011–12 it was in excess of £1 million. Mandelson seems to have drawn out some £274,000 from the firm. By 2013–14 it was still in excess of £1 million and the accounts show that it made Mandelson a £400,000 advance during that financial year.3 The purpose of the loan is unclear, but it was not paid back in the year and would, according to tax adviser Richa
rd Murphy, legitimately lessen his tax bill as he does not have to pay tax on the loan if he pays interest at a rate specified by HM Revenue and Customs.
His memoirs, The Third Man, are alleged to have netted him £500,000. The accounts suggest that speculation that he may have got £150,000 are nearer to the mark, and, if The Times paid £350,000 for the serialisation, it suggests much of the money would have gone back to the publisher against the advance, leaving Mandelson with about £350,000.
The company has one other very interesting member, who links Blair and Mandelson. The company secretary is Maree Gail Glass, who, as we have already seen, is the COO to Global Counsel. Between 2008 and 2010, she worked as personal assistant to Mandelson in the Department of Business. But also significant is that she worked in the private office team for Tony Blair. She could not be a more trusted person to keep details of Mandelson’s finances discreet and is another link to Blair.
Mandelson established Global Counsel with his old special adviser and longstanding friend Benjamin Wegg-Prosser. Originally set up as a limited company by both of them with 4,505 shares on 29 May 2010, twenty-three days after Labour’s defeat in the 2010 general election, it had, by 23 November that year, been dissolved and transformed into a far more secretive and less disclosing limited-liability partnership.
Its accountants and official registered office were, again, MHA MacIntyre Hudson and, again, both Mandelson and Wegg-Prosser register their official addresses with the company, to avoid disclosing their home addresses. Indeed Wegg-Prosser’s Russian wife Yulia, has also registered her address there to avoid people finding out where they live.
Blair Inc--The Man Behind the Mask Page 18