UAE funded Blair's peace efforts

LONDON • Tony Blair’s work as a Middle East peace envoy was secretly funded by a wealthy Arab state that also employed him as a paid adviser, leaked emails reveal.

The United Arab Emirates financed Blair’s London office while he also received millions in consultancy fees from the state and the sovereign wealth fund of its capital Abu Dhabi.

The UAE’s contributions to Blair’s Quartet work were never disclosed on the website of the Office of the Quartet Representative. The Quartet comprises the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia.

According to the Office of the Quartet website, funding was channelled through the UN Development Program and declared on the site. Nine donors, including Canada, the U.S. and U.K., are listed, but UAE is not among them.

A senior Foreign Office official acting as Blair’s chief of staff in his role as Quartet envoy was also used for assignments connected to his private consultancy empire.

The disclosures will raise serious questions over potential conflicts of interest between the former British prime minister’s public and private work. He has always insisted that his public and private work were kept separate and has denied that Quartet staff were involved in “commercial work.”

However, Blair has admitted under questioning that he accepted money from the UAE to bankroll both his role as the unpaid official envoy to the Middle East and private consultancy work funded by the Gulf state.

Emails seen by The Telegraph show that a year after Blair left Downing Street and became Quartet representative, Nick Banner, his chief of staff in the envoy role, travelled to UAE to meet Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the chief executive of Mubadala, the sovereign wealth fund for which Blair began paid advisory work the following year.

The next month, Banner, an official on loan from the Foreign Office, was tasked with arranging talks between UI Energy, a Korean oil company the former prime minister was being paid to advise, and the head of a state-run investment firm in Abu Dhabi. Blair’s work for the Korean firm was not disclosed for another two years.

In 2009, Rebecca Guthrie, a Foreign Office official seconded to Blair’s Quartet office, sent bank details for Windrush Ventures, the company that channelled money for his commercial advisory work, to a UAE official, days after formal Middle East talks he held with Sheikh Abdullah at the United Nations in New York.

A spokesman for Blair insisted Sunday he “never used his Quartet role to pursue business interests.”