The future looked bright. In June 2007, Tony Blair bequeathed his premiership to Gordon Brown and began zipping about the Middle East in private jets as an official peace envoy.

But he was far from content with his unpaid yet prestigious role. After all, he had never had any intention of living on his annual pension of £63,468 — and hadn’t he promised Cherie that they’d be seriously wealthy after leaving Downing Street? Jonathan Powell, his former chief of staff, came to the rescue.

Setting up a meeting with a leading headhunter, Powell told him bluntly: ‘Tony needs a job.’

Nigerian President-elect Muhammadu Buhari (pictured left), former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Vice President-elect Yemi Osinbajo (right), talk to the media in Abuja, Nigeria, 13 May 2015

In turn, the headhunter, Martin Armstrong, had a chat with Blair’s PR friend Matthew Freud, and together the men agreed that the headhunter should try the U.S. investment bank J.P. Morgan.

Armstrong’s approach was fruitful. On July 11, 2007, the bank’s chief executive met Blair at Freud’s office in Mayfair, and offered him a seat on the J.P. Morgan board.

‘You’d take over from George Shultz,’ said chief executive Jamie Dimon, referring to the ailing former U.S. Secretary of State. Blair’s annual fee, he added, would be $100,000 — about £72,000.

But this failed to impress Blair. Bluntly, he told Dimon he wanted ‘a proper job’ and expected at least £3 million a year, a five-year contract as an adviser and a percentage of every contract he initiated.

If Dimon was taken aback, he didn’t show it. Within weeks, he’d offered Blair almost all he wanted.

It was a good start — but there was one person involved who was less than thrilled: the headhunter.

To Armstrong’s dismay, more than a year after helping Blair land his contract, he still hadn’t been paid the customary introductory fee from the bank.

The former British Prime Minister ‘blurred’ the lines between his charity work and commercial interests

Perhaps Blair could help, he thought. His chance came when he spotted the former PM at a 40th birthday party for Freud’s then wife Elisabeth Murdoch at her country estate in October 2008.

Approaching Blair, he introduced himself: ‘I’m the guy who placed you with J.P. Morgan...’

‘Good for you,’ replied Blair, and walked quickly away.

By then, he had more important matters to contend with — such as a new deal with Zurich Insurance to advise on climate change, for a salary of about £180,000 a year.

He’d also been retained as a paid adviser by Bernard Arnault, the head of a French luxury-goods conglomerate, whom he’d once entertained at Chequers.

His opportunities to make money seemed limitless...

Not only did Blair’s role as a Middle East peace envoy open doors, but the two charities he set up after leaving office were proving to be useful calling cards.

There was his Faith Foundation, which was meant to encourage tolerance between the religions, and his Africa Governance Initiative (AGI) — through which he hoped to advise leaders on how to run their countries.

THREE WORDS HE HATES: FREEDOM OF INFORMATION One of Tony Blair’s greatest regrets is that his government passed the Freedom of Information Act. ‘Three harmless words,’ he mused. ‘I look at those words as I write them and feel like shaking my head till it drops off my shoulders. ‘You idiot. You naïve, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it.’ He resents any possibility that the veil of secrecy with which he surrounds his affairs might ever be lifted. And, at the very least, he is determined to stop the media from delving into his finances. Both his accountants, KPMG, and his lawyers were asked to erect unusual barriers to prevent an accurate assessment of his wealth. Hence, his income is now channelled through a complicated legal structure. At the top is BDBCO No. 819 Ltd, a company that in turn owns a clutch of other companies called either Windrush or Firerush. It gets more complicated: Windrush Ventures No. 3 LP, for instance, is part owned by Windrush Ventures No. 2 LP, which in turn controls Windrush Ventures Ltd. Fortuitously, LPs — short for limited partnerships — are not obliged to publish their accounts. That’s why no one could authoritatively challenge Blair when he said last year he was worth ‘only £10 million’. But some critics have speculated that he’s been channelling income through a number of new, unknown companies. He tries to surround himself with staff whose loyalty is unquestionable — including Catherine Rimmer, his devoted former special adviser at No 10. All are obliged to sign an onerous confidentiality agreement that lays out severe penalties for any unauthorised disclosures. Advertisement

To them, his approach was nearly always the same: using millions donated to AGI by charities or foreign government aid agencies, he’d set up a ‘delivery unit’ for them — based on a unit run by educationalist Michael Barber, that he’d created while in Downing Street.

So often did he peddle this line that Barber’s book, How To Run A Government, soon became a ‘must read’ across the developing world.

But what Blair never bothered to tell all the dictators and presidents was that the Downing Street delivery unit had not been a conspicuous success. Indeed, it had been closed down after just four years.

As well as promoting his charities, Blair also worked hard at increasing his fortune.

He maintained there was a strict line drawn between his charities and private work; but in practice this line was blurred, as was his frequent use of British embassies paid for by the taxpayer.

Take, for instance, one of his more recent ventures.

In May 2015, Blair flew to Nigeria to meet the new president, Muhammadu Buhari, on a jet chartered by Evgeny Lebedev, who owns the London Evening Standard with his father, a former KGB colonel.

After a night at the Hilton Hotel, Blair called the following morning on the British High Commissioner.

Dropping in on British embassies had by then become a familiar routine: in every country Blair visits, he expects the embassy to provide him with a comprehensive security briefing and occasionally even overnight accommodation.

But although he was advising sovereign governments in ways that could conflict with British interests, no one at Whitehall had dared to end this perk.

Tony Blair greets His Highness Emir of Kuwait in Number 10 Downing Street, London, in February 2007

At the Nigerian embassy, Blair was keen to discover more about the threat posed by Boko Haram, the Islamic terror group murdering hundreds of civilians in the north of the country.

Then, armed with the classified information, he sped in a motor cavalcade to the president’s office. It was their first meeting. Blair introduced himself grandly as ‘Britain’s most successful Prime Minister’ and then launched into his practised sales pitch.

‘I pioneered the skills to make government work effectively,’ he told the president. ‘The Delivery Unit is the leader’s weapon to make his government effective across the civil service and country.’

He offered to establish a delivery unit within Buhari’s government, with paid staff. But the president — a former army general and military dictator famous for imprisoning his opponents without trial — looked bored.

So did Lebedev, who had only come along because he was interested in Blair’s charity work fighting the Ebola virus.

‘Could you all leave us alone now?’ Blair announced suddenly. ‘I have a personal message for the president from David Cameron.’

But it was nothing of the kind.

Twenty minutes later, Buhari emerged looking noticeably disgruntled.

Blair, he told an aide, had used his access to tout for business on behalf of his private company, Tony Blair Associates.

Without so much as a blush, he had offered to sell the president Israeli drones and other military equipment to help defeat the Boko Haram uprising. ‘Blair is just after business,’ muttered Buhari.

During the drive back to the airport, the local organiser for Blair’s AGI charity asked whether he was mixing charity and business. ‘We don’t do business in Africa,’ Blair replied.

‘Don’t worry. Only AGI and charitable work. We only do business in the Middle East and Asia.’

Two weeks later, the local AGI organiser called Buhari’s office to ask whether the president wanted to go ahead with a delivery unit. He was rebuffed.

‘The president was not happy with Blair pushing the Israeli business,’ Buhari’s office warned him.

QUEEN REFUSED TO COME OVER FOR DINNER Immediately after the death of Princess Diana in 1997, neither Prince Charles nor the Queen was prepared to speak publicly. To help quell public anger, Blair eagerly stepped into the breach. After consulting his spin-doctor, Alastair Campbell, he read out an emotional eulogy about the ‘People’s Princess’. And he later claimed credit for rescuing the monarchy from embarrassment — by persuading the Queen to return to London, inspect the vast floral tributes outside Buckingham Palace and address the nation on TV. How did this all go down with the Royal Family? The truth is that their relations with Blair had been frosty from the outset, and did not improve. By tradition, they had to welcome Britain’s Prime Minister each September for a weekend at Balmoral. After Blair’s visit that year, however, he broke with protocol by announcing that the monarchy intended to ‘change and modernise’. Although the Queen was entitled to expect sound advice from her Prime Minister, he had failed to understand that it should remain secret. Afterwards, she never went out of her way to help him. The Blairs wanted her to come to Downing Street for dinner on the Prime Minister’s last night in office — but Buckingham Palace refused. After he stepped down, the Queen’s unease turned to general suspicion. To the amazement of some, the Blairs were not invited to the wedding of William and Kate. And, for the first time in her long reign, the Queen is said to have refused to award the Order of the Garter to a former Prime Minister. Others say it was declined. Advertisement

Anyone else might have desisted; not the eternally optimistic Blair.

Six weeks later, in London, he met Bukola Saraki, the president of the Nigerian senate and third most powerful person in the country.

This time, as he discussed opportunities to introduce investors from the Middle East to Nigeria, he was more successful. ‘We’d like that,’ said Saraki — who was fully aware that Blair now also represented a wealth fund based in Abu Dhabi.

In his quest for profitable work, Blair sometimes agreed to give well-paid speeches — including an address in Orlando, Florida, to the International Sanitary Supply Association — manufacturers of lavatory cleaners.

But for the most part, he concentrated on offering advice to sheikhs, presidents and dictators.

He was pushing at an open door — after all, few other people in the world could confide to potential clients that they had access to President Obama and other world leaders.

His impeccable credentials helped win him a £20 million deal with Kuwait to review the country’s economy. Selected Kuwaiti experts were hired for the project and flown to London for training.

His visitors were directed to conduct exhaustive research in Kuwait to identify the country’s problems. Then they were asked to visit Singapore in order to study the country’s excellent education system, and South Korea to study the health system.

Blair’s eventual report — ‘Kuwait Vision 2035’ — was greeted with derision. It was a lengthy repetition of Kuwait’s well- known problems, concluding with a series of impractical solutions, according to critics.

To save face, the country’s rulers buried the report.

Not surprisingly, Blair was discovering that trading access to earn millions of pounds could be a grubby business.

U.I. Energy of South Korea wanted his help to secure an oil contract.

No matter that the company was later embroiled in a corruption scandal — Blair accepted the fee.

From another company called PetroSaudi, he was paid £41,000 a month plus 2 per cent commission on any deals he brokered with Chinese officials.

It was short-lived: PetroSaudi was subsequently accused of bribing Malaysian politicians.

Another of Blair’s lucrative deals, in 2011, was with Nursultan Nazarbayev, the dictator of Kazakhstan, whom he’d once welcomed to Downing Street.

Unfortunately, soon after the ex-PM started working for him, Kazakh security forces shot dead 14 unarmed protesters and wounded 60 others. There were also reports of opponents being tortured.

‘I don’t dismiss the human rights stuff,’ said Blair, trying to justify his connection with the dictator.

‘These are points we make. There’s a whole new generation of administrators there who are reformers, and we’re working with them.’

In an hour-long video about Nazarbayev, Blair could be seen sitting happily beside him, and repeatedly eulogising him. He also arranged for his old crony Alastair Campbell and former Downing Street spokesman Tim Allan to promote the despot.

The following year, Nazarbayev asked Blair for advice about a speech he was about to make in Cambridge. How should he address the killing of the 14 civilians?

‘Tragic though they were,’ Blair wrote, ‘that should not obscure the enormous progress that Kazakhstan has made.’

While expanding his empire, Blair has also added greatly to the fortunes of his original employer, J.P. Morgan.

Back in 2010, he asked for a one-on-one meeting with the then Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan — ostensibly to offer the services of AGI and the Faith Foundation to help reconcile the country’s Muslims and Christians.

Again, he was given an intelligence briefing by the British embassy in advance.

But having charmed the president and — in the words of Jonathan’s staff — satisfied his ego, Blair then introduced him to J.P. Morgan chief Jamie Dimon.

Another of Blair’s lucrative deals, in 2011, was with Nursultan Nazarbayev, the dictator of Kazakhstan, whom he’d once welcomed to Downing Street

The banker offered to manage Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund — and Jonathan agreed. No other bank in the world was asked to tender for this profitable work.

From Nigeria, Blair flew with Dimon to Liberia, where he already had a charity AGI team in place to advise the president. The upshot? J.P. Morgan invested in a commercial project in Liberia.

Then, in September 2012, Blair was asked by a banker to help Ivan Glasenberg, the chief executive of Glencore, the world’s biggest commodity trading house, to buy a rival called Xstrata.

To succeed, Glasenberg needed the support of the prime minister of Qatar, which owned nearly 12 per cent of Xstrata’s shares.

So a hefty fee was agreed for Blair to introduce the pair and encourage the deal.

Although present at their hour-long meeting, he remained curiously silent.

Afterwards, Glasenberg wondered if Blair’s huge fee had been a waste of money.

In addition to serving bankers, Blair had many other commercial paymasters — such as Mubadala of Abu Dhabi. This was a sovereign wealth fund that reportedly invested £3.6 billion in 2013 to mine bauxite in Guinea — where Blair already had AGI staff in the president’s office. And as Mubadala started investing in Vietnam, Serbia, Colombia and West Africa, Blair was contracted to earn commissions of up to 20 per cent.

He also popped up on the advisory panel that supervised the construction of British Petroleum’s £32 billion oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean. Oddly enough, he was also paid to advise the president of Azerbaijan. In addition, his services were called in when BP was seeking new oil concessions in Abu Dhabi.

The sheikh who employed Blair privately to work for his investment fund also happened to be the head of Abu Dhabi’s Supreme Petroleum Council. And so it goes on.

Today, with his tangled web of charity and private interests, Blair remains at the centre of a bewildering number of enterprises.

By February this year, he claimed to have established a network of commercial contacts in 25 nations — in parallel with charity enterprises in 20 countries.

In the process, he had amply fulfilled his pledge to Cherie. The Blairs are now indeed seriously rich, and have so far spent more than £25 million on UK property alone. Yet, still, Tony Blair cannot resist seeking new deals.