Blair Foundation’s closure halted by mystery objector
Ever since Tony Blair set up his Faith Foundation in 2008, it has been dogged by controversy. Now he can’t even close it down without causing a stir.
Companies House has just received an objection to the closure of the former Prime Minister’s charity.
The Foundation applied to be struck-off the register of companies in December, and a strike-off notice was duly published in the London Gazette in January. However, its dissolution has now been temporarily halted. ‘ The striking- off and dissolution of the above company has been suspended as an objection has been received by the registrar,’ says a Companies House notice.
The notice does not identify the objector, Companies House will not elaborate, nor will Blair’s office. But it is not unusual for HMrC to object to companies being wound up due to tax issues.
Blair’s Faith Foundation is one of three charities he founded after leaving Downing Street, the others being the Tony Blair Governance Initiative and the Tony Blair Sports
Foundation. While the Sports Foundation is closing completely, the other two are being folded into a new venture — the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change — along with his commercial projects, the Windrush and Firerush companies.
In 2016, Blair announced he was focusing on his ‘not-for-profit’ work, after squirrelling away millions from secretive deals with despots around the world.
The globe-trotting moneybags has been criticised in the past for mixing his charity work with his commercial activities. In 2014, the Charity Commission met with representatives from the Tony Blair Faith Foundation after a former employee claimed the ex-Prime Minister used it as a ‘thinktank’ for his private office.
Latest accounts for the Foundation report the transfer of its assets to the new institute — comprising £2.1 million in funds and a lease to premises in Canary Wharf.
A post-balance sheet event note in the accounts reports: ‘With effect from March 1, 2017, the activities, assets, liabilities and undertakings carried out by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation were transferred to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a not-for-profit company.’