After Tony Blair left Downing Street for the last time on June 27, 2007, he headed by train to his constituency in Co. Durham with Cherie and the children.

At Darlington station car park, the family walked towards a smart BMW — until someone whispered in the ear of the now former prime minister that it was not his car.

Would he kindly head towards the Vauxhall in the far corner?

Scroll down for video

Since leaving office, Tony Blair, Britain’s longest-serving Labour prime minister has made more money than any previous former PM in history. He has amassed a fortune believed to be at least £60 million

Here was a sudden and sharp reminder of his changed status.

Perhaps it was at that moment Blair decided he needed to re-create the life he had lived as prime minister; that, despite his loss of office, he would never be humiliated like that again; and that in future, the car waiting for him would always be the best one in the car park.

More likely, however, is that he had made that decision many years earlier. What is certain is that in the years since leaving office, Britain’s longest-serving Labour prime minister has made more money than any previous former PM in history.

He has amassed a fortune believed to be at least £60 million and built a property empire worth an estimated £25 million, including four London homes and a grade I-listed manor in Buckinghamshire.

What a turnaround in the Blair family’s financial fortunes. They have certainly moved on from the fraught days in 2003 when it was revealed that, with the help of conman Peter Foster, Cherie had bought two flats in Bristol for £265,000 (which have since been sold for a total of £575,000).

When they bought their grand home in London’s Connaught Square in 2004 for £3.65 million, the deposit — £182,500 — was higher than Blair’s prime ministerial salary.

Then Prime Minister Tony Blair meets with troops in the port of Umm Qasr, Iraq, 29 May 2003

That left them with what Cherie described in her memoirs as a mortgage ‘the size of Mount Snowdon’ — £3.47 million, to be paid off over 25 years.

Since then their finances have improved to the point where they have been able to buy London homes for their daughter Kathryn and son Nicky for £975,000 and £1.35 million respectively.

In cash.

Then there’s the cottage in Buckinghamshire bought for Tony’s sister for £600,000, again in cash; a £1.29 million home for son Euan, bought with a mortgage; the manor house in Buckinghamshire, bought for £5.75 million; and the mews house behind their Connaught Square home, bought in 2008 with an £800,000 mortgage, which is now paid off.

Last October, Cherie bought ten apartments in Manchester for £650,000, followed a few weeks later by 14 apartments in nearby Southport, bought with her son Euan for an estimated £1.3 million.

£9 MILLION FOR BEING A GLOBE-TROTTING BORE Public speaking has earned Blair £9 million. He charges up to £200,000 per lecture through the Washington Speakers Bureau, of which President George W. Bush is also a client. Blair went on its list four months after ceasing to be prime minister, taking a $600,000 signing bonus. pUBLIC He has also signed up with the All American Speakers Bureau, with a fee of $200,000 upwards — twice the rate of Donald Trump. Yet, for a man once considered an orator, he has turned into a stiflingly boring speaker, frequently appearing to do little more than read out his host’s PR handout, but sometimes producing a breathtakingly banal observation of his own. ‘When things are in the balance, when you cannot be sure, when others are uncertain or hesitate, when the very point is that the outcome is in doubt — that is when a leader steps forward,’ was the pearl of wisdom he shared with a Beijing audience in 2008. At a conference on Africa in 2013, he said there was ‘something wonderful, vibrant and exciting’ about the continent’s culture and traditions. At a university in the Philippines, he declared that the main problems U.S. President Obama faces ‘are essentially global in nature’. The huge sums he commands are something of a mystery given the content of his lectures. In a 2007 speech at a VIP banquet in the city of Dongguan in China, he declared for his $200,000 fee that: ‘The reason I am here is because I was told everything happening here was amazing. Dongguan’s future is immeasurable.’ Such twaddle infuriated Chinese newspapers, which said Blair’s empty remarks showed he was interested only in ‘digging for gold and “money-sucking” ’. One commentator wrote: ‘Why pay such a high price to hear the same thing? Is it worth the money? Do these thoughts multiply in value because they come from the mouth of a retired prime minister?’ Advertisement

Not to mention the sumptuous offices in Grosvenor Square rented by Blair at a cost of £550,000 a year as the UK headquarters of his consultancy, Tony Blair Associates.

The glamorous Georgian townhouse resembles the seat of power of a president or prime minister.

On the mantelpiece in his cream- coloured office are pictures of him with elder statesmen such as Nelson Mandela. ‘He runs his office like No 10,’ says a former staffer.

The manor house in Buckinghamshire rivals Chequers — the grace-and-favour country estate of the Prime Minister — complete with formal garden.

In short, he has maintained all the trappings of power while adopting the lifestyle of the billionaire jet set with whom he liked to holiday while prime minister.

To achieve this, he has turned himself, in the words of one critic, into ‘a human cash register’.

It’s not a sin for our political leaders to earn money once they leave Downing Street.

Blair’s immediate predecessor, John Major, took a senior position with the U.S. private equity firm Carlyle Group.

Tony pictured kissing wife Cherie with their children Nicky, Kathryn and Euan in at a Labour Party conference

Margaret Thatcher made $500,000 a year as a consultant with Philip Morris, the tobacco company.

But their earnings are dwarfed by Blair’s. They were also far more discreet and restrained in their business dealings and, by Blair’s standards, very easily satisfied. By contrast, Blair is reported to have told one of those guarding him that he would like to be as wealthy as Bill Clinton (estimated to have a net worth of $80 million).

He has sought to make his money while also creating an international profile as a do-gooder, becoming the Middle East special envoy of the Quartet (an international diplomatic group consisting of the UN, the EU, the U.S. and Russia) and setting up charities, such as the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and the African Governance Initiative.

What is most disturbing about Blair is that no former prime minister has built his new-found wealth so directly on exploiting his one-time office. It was at No 10 that he made the contacts and cultivated the relationships that are now making him so very rich.

Blair has turned into a human cash register

The potential for conflicts of interest is immense. He accepted the invitation to become the (unpaid) Middle East envoy on the day he stepped down as prime minister.

Just six months later, on January 10, 2008, he was appointed to the board of U.S. investment bank J. P. Morgan Chase, on an annual salary of £2 million.

In 2010, Blair agreed a secret contract with a Saudi oil company for arranging introductions to his contacts in China for a fee of £41,000 a month plus 2 per cent commission on any deals he helped broker.

The contract, which, according to a spokesman for the oil company PetroSaudi, lasted ‘four or five months maximum’, came to light only after it was leaked to a British newspaper in November 2014.

A former British ambassador to Libya, Oliver Miles, has demanded that Blair disclose the rest of his commercial interests. He is one of a group of former ambassadors who are calling for Blair to be removed from his post as Middle East envoy because of the conflict of interest with his business dealings.

A leading U.S. businessman who was once close to Blair and advised him to prioritise doing good, not making money, has discreetly moved out of his life as he watched the progress of his work as envoy.

The businessman (who is, like Blair, an active Christian) told us that the former PM privately thought his advice was absurd.

He feels Blair is ‘very interested in making money and it takes precedence over other things. It is also clear he has done a horrible job in all the assignments he has taken. There is no evidence he has done anything positive, other than make money’.

Then PM Blair meeting Muammar Gaddafi at his desert base outside Sirte south of Tripoli. Blair twice visited Libya for talks with Gaddafi in the months leading up to the release of the Lockerbie bomber

He believes Blair treats the Middle East envoy job as a ‘calling card’ and adds: ‘He travels round the world as the Quartet representative. But when he meets the Sultan or the Emir, do they think they are going to talk about the Quartet or about getting investment advice from him?’

It’s a troubling question, but anyone seeking to answer it faces one overwhelming problem: the extraordinary veil of secrecy that Tony Blair has thrown over his money-making empire.

Blair is the first prime minister in British history whose activities after leaving office are so extensive they merit a book in their own right.

When we asked for help from Blair’s organisations and friends, we made the point to them that secretiveness builds suspicion. But it quickly became apparent that we were up against a culture of secrecy so extreme we had encountered it only once before.

The only other public figure so affronted that any person should seek to write about him when not authorised by him to do so, and who instructed his adherents and employees to give no assistance at all to so disrespectful a project, was Arthur Scargill.

He's done nothing positive except make money

We approached Blair’s media spokespeople as well as present and former senior staff and immediately came up against a brick wall. All of them had signed savagely worded confidentiality agreements — as does everyone who works for Blair, even unpaid interns. Even ordinary pieces of information were treated as though they were state secrets: for example, the press officer at the Tony Blair Faith Foundation refused to give its address, referring us instead to what is given on the website: PO Box 60519, London W2 7JU.

This lack of transparency, combined with the confusion of Blair’s roles and the permanent conflict of interest that surrounds them, is what makes his business dealings appear so suspicious.

As founder and chief executive of Tony Blair Associates, he has created an organisation with the most impenetrable financial structure that is legally possible in Britain.

Clever tax accountants and lawyers have devised a structure of companies that breaks no rules, but means that Blair can deny any public claim disclosing his income — because no one can prove it.

When journalists and others make estimates, Blair representatives invariably say these are wrong, but provide no information. Except once. Blair was asked about his net worth during the razzmatazz on July 21, 2014, the 20th anniversary of his taking the leadership of the Labour Party.

Asked if he was worth £100 million, he replied he was worth just a fifth of that.

Just £20 million? Our estimate is three times more, but he has set up a system that makes it virtually impossible to work out his wealth; even he might have difficulty calculating it.

It also makes it impossible to know who is paying him or where the money goes.

At the top of this complex structure is the umbrella organisation, Tony Blair Associates, which was established in 2009.

SO JUST HOW MUCH DOES HE RAKE IN? Who are the clients willing to fork out huge sums for Tony Blair’s services? We asked for a list, but it is confidential. From public sources, however, we can name them as including: Who Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, the luxury handbag, cognac and champagne company, which once employed Euan Blair. Zurich Insurance (thought to bring in £500,000 a year). J. P. Morgan (believed to bring in £2 million a year). The Emir of Kuwait (thought to have paid £27 million for consultancy advice). The Abu Dhabi government (which is believed to bring in £1 million a year). The Government of Kazakhstan (paying £8 million a year for economic and governance advice, according to Kazakh sources). UI Energy, a Korean oil firm, for which Blair admitted he had done consultancy work, but declined to publish details, despite being pressed to do so by watchdog the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments. Country pile: Blair's manor The International Sanitary Supply Association (£50,000 for addressing a conference). Wataniya, the Palestinian phone company owned by Qtel, a client of J. P. Morgan. Blair has also made substantial sums from speeches in China and advises the Mongolian government under a two-year consultancy agreement. Some of the money is said to be routed towards his charitable activities. The charities, in particular, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, also have secret donors. He has 200 employees on his staff payroll — a figure he’s set his sights on growing to 500. Sources close to him have told us that the model for his growing organisation is the equally secretive U.S. global management consultancy McKinsey. ‘There was a great New Labour love affair with McKinsey when Blair was prime minister,’ says one senior banking source. ‘There are lot of McKinsey alumni on the government advisory side of Blair’s business and always have been.’ Tony Blair Associates’ UK headquarters — which is also the base for his three directors of Windrush Ventures — employs 35 people on an average salary of £86,000 a year, almost £1 million more than last year. The company’s highest paid director receives £273,000 — up from £200,000 the previous year. This director is thought to be Catherine Rimmer, Mr Blair’s chief of staff and a former Downing Street aide, or David Lyon, a former Barclays investment banker, who was recruited by Blair in 2012 to ‘grow and develop’ his business activities. The other two directors share £307,000 between them — nearly double the £175,000 paid in 2012. According to payment schedules we have seen, up until 2012, Blair’s companies — that’s not himself or his family — generated £40.7 million. If you add figures up to 2013, this increased by another £13 million, taking the total to nearly £54 million. What is clear from these figures is that Blair’s financial empire is growing by the day and the money he is making — whether for his charities or his family — continues to rise. Advertisement

Sheltering beneath it is a web of 12 legal entities, structured in such a way as to be impenetrable. Money presumably passes between them, but how and to what precise purpose is unknown.

These legal entities are split into what are known as the Windrush companies and the Firerush companies, and are organised via a nominee company through leading private wealth lawyers, Bircham Dyson Bell.

The names of owners do not have to be declared. Shares are listed as held by the lawyers, acting as nominees. Details of the accounts are generally undisclosed, so it is impossible to see what money is coming in and where it comes from.

According to one of Blair’s internal business experts: ‘There is a structure that looks unnecessarily complex and those names do not mean much in terms of trading.

‘You know, the president of Kazakhstan doesn’t say: “Gosh, I want to be advised on governance by Windrush or Firerush.” He says: “I want to be advised by Tony Blair.” ’

The Blairs with Labour leader Ed Miliband and his wife Justine at a Labour Party Sports Dinner at Arsenal Football Club

Such arrangements are not cheap to set up and operate, but, according to accountant Richard Murphy, founder of the London-based research group Tax Justice Network, Blair is willing to spend good money to keep his earnings hidden.

‘It is hard to find Blair in the set-up, even though he owns it,’ he says.

He also suspects that the reason Blair has so far declined to accept the peerage he is entitled to is that he would have to disclose his income to the House of Lords.

Mr Murphy points out that Blair has hidden his money behind an exceptionally arcane structure based on an obscure legal loophole — the little known partnership regulations set up in 1907 by the Campbell-Bannerman Liberal government.

This allows him to funnel his money through partnerships and so-called nominee companies that are not obliged to reveal their owners or publish accounts.

Small glimpses inside this structure appear from time to time. Official accounts of one Windrush company show that in 2011 it paid just £315,000 in tax on an income of more than £12 million.

In that time, 26 staff were employed on a total wage bill of almost £2.3 million and there were large outgoings on private jet hire and hotel bills for overseas visits. There was also a substantial cash pile of £13 million.

Of all Blair’s activities, it is his role as Middle East envoy — and its relationship to his money-making — that raises most questions.

His appointment to the post was not straightforward and was driven by the Bush administration in Washington. According to a well-placed source, the State Department was opposed to it, but Bush insisted, saying: ‘Blair sacrificed his political career for me.’

The envoy’s mandate was ‘to help mediate Middle East peace negotiations and to support Palestinian economic development and institution-building in preparation for eventual statehood’.

Seven years later, despite his magnificent Jerusalem offices, armour-plated car and large staff, Blair would be a fantasist if he believed he had done a good job.

PEACE ENVOY OR CYNICAL PROFITEER? So closely intertwined are Blair’s money-making and political interests that it is often hard to distinguish between the two. When he negotiated a deal in November 2009 for phone lines in Gaza to be installed by Palestinian company Wataniya — which is owned by a client of J. P. Morgan — in what capacity was he working? Was he acting only as Middle East envoy? Or is it possible he was acting in his role as a consultant to J P Morgan (which he flatly denies)? Blair’s efforts to persuade Israel to release the necessary share of the radio spectrum for the Wataniya deal to go ahead were extensive. He lobbied the Israeli government for more than a year and finally, we can reveal, he even wrote to the then U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, telling her it was a ‘major project, which if successful would entail the largest investment in the Palestinian economy to date’. Why did he do this? Could it be that he wanted her to put pressure on the Israeli government to agree to the deal? The more Machiavellian interpretation sees Blair serving his paymasters’ interests — and indirectly his own. As James Wolfensohn told us: ‘For Tony Blair to say, “I would like to talk to you about the peace process” is a very different entry point from saying, “I would like to get an oil concession in the east of your country for a client” or, “I would like to become an adviser to your country”.’ So, whose hat was Tony Blair wearing when he negotiated the mobile phone concession? The same question can be asked about another of his claimed major successes: the lobbying of Israel for approval of an offshore gas extraction deal for Gaza. This, too, benefited a corporate client of J. P. Morgan — British Gas — and Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC), a big, privately owned construction firm, which is a client of . . . Tony Blair Associates. Advertisement

Peace in the Middle East looks further away than ever, and the envoy seems irrelevant to what is going on in the region. He says he spends about a week a month in the region, but all of our sources tell us the typical pattern of this week is that he arrives on a Monday evening and leaves on Thursday morning. The distinguished Palestinian negotiator Dr Hanan Ashrawi told us: ‘He is part-time. He certainly doesn’t report to me once a month.’

Blair’s office would not give any indication of how much time he spends in the region. But it claimed journalists would not be aware of all his visits, so their estimates would not be reliable. It declined to offer its own estimate.

However, there is little doubt that his predecessor in the job, James Wolfensohn, former head of the World Bank, spent much more time in the region. He told us that to do any good for the peace process, you have to put in a lot of time. ‘It is a full-time job and you cannot do that on a timetable of two or three days. You cannot do anything in a rushed manner in the Arab world.’

Those in the know say Wolfensohn was in non-stop negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, shuttling between Gaza, Jerusalem and Ramallah. He got involved in nitty-gritty issues, such as organising openings at road crossings so there could be free movement of buses for the Arab population and goods between the West Bank and Gaza.

Blair, on the other hand, with his once-over-lightly, butterfly approach to diplomacy, prefers great geopolitical thinking and high-flown rhetoric rather than detailed on-the-ground negotiations.

The considered view is that in one of the most turbulent times for the Middle East, he has done little or nothing to bring Israel and Palestine together through economic and security co-operation, apart from occasionally turning up at the region’s most exotic hotel and consulting with a few local leaders and journalists.

There is a general perception that he uses the post of Middle East envoy to move on from tough and intractable discussions about the peace process to issues that advance his business interests.

Blair’s office claims he has pulled off real achievements — lifting checkpoints that severely restricted movement and securing an additional 10,000 permits for Palestinian labourers to work in Israel.

Cherie and Tony after his speech at the Labour Party Conference September 2005

But he has also negotiated two deals in Gaza that benefit clients of his employer, J P Morgan.

Then there are Blair’s regular visits to Abu Dhabi as Middle East envoy. At the same time, Tony Blair Associates has been providing ‘global strategic advice’ to the Crown Prince’s sovereign wealth fund, which invests Abu Dhabi’s oil profits.

Some suspect Blair is even benefiting from the most controversial decision of his premiership — to go to war against Iraq.

His part in the demise of Saddam Hussein made him popular in Kuwait, where he has since made millions as an adviser to the Emir and where he has his own office in the Kuwaiti parliament buildings.

In January 2009, when Blair was in Kuwait under the aegis of his Middle East envoy role, he met the Emir.

What came out of the meeting from the point of view of peace in the Middle East, we do not know. We do know, however, that Tony Blair Associates picked up a lucrative consultancy contract in which his firm stands to earn £27 million.

Alex Brummer, the Mail’s City editor and a vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, suggests that Blair’s role as envoy is ‘no more than a ticket to making ever more millions’ and it ‘has been a godsend for his broader ambition of making as much money for Blair Inc as quickly as possible’.

He gets away with all his conflicting interests because no code of conduct applies to him.

If he were still an MP, worked for the World Bank or even directly for the United Nations, he would have to make a full disclosure of his commercial interests.

Some say that his commercial interests and his role as envoy overlap significantly.

‘In the morning, he is the big Middle East negotiator. In the afternoon, he’s the businessman trying to lubricate connections between big shots,’ writes American journalist Jacob Heilbrunn.

‘In essence, Blair has turned himself into a mini-corporation, cashing in on his former job.’