It was, at its launch, Cherie Blair’s grand vision: a female-run investment fund to build health clinics in high streets around the world.

However, documents seen by The Telegraph show the Allele Fund, a private equity fund registered in the offshore tax haven of the Cayman Islands, is being shut down.

In all likelihood, investors who each poured hundreds of thousands of pounds into the fund will lose every penny. It is not clear how much money Mrs Blair invested personally in the scheme, but she was its co-founder and front woman, who launched the fund with great fanfare and vast ambition.

“It was determined based on the information that we have at this time that the current value of the equity investments into Worldwide Healthcare and Wellness Centres Ltd?? by the Allele Fund is likely essentially zero.”

“It was determined based on the information that we have at this time that the current value of the equity investments into Worldwide Healthcare and Wellness Centres Ltd?? by the Allele Fund is likely essentially zero.” Gail Lese in letter to investors

The document was sent by Gail Lese, Mrs Blair’s business partner, to Allele investors informing them that they were unlikely to get any of their money back.

“Like each of you,” Mrs Lese told investors on January 18 this year, “I have lost a substantial investment in the Allele Fund.”

Allele Fund was established in 2008 by Mrs Blair and Dr Lese, shortly after the Blairs left Downing Street. The aim was to invest in healthcare and technology companies internationally.

The fund’s major foray into the British market was to set up a chain of private health clinics, offering opticians’ services, dentistry and hearing aids under one roof. The first clinics under the Mee Healthcare brand opened within Sainsbury’s superstores.

But Mee Healthcare failed to properly take off. Mrs Blair launched it with much fanfare in 2012, promising to open 100 clinics within five years. In the first three years it managed to open just 11. An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph a year ago reported how Mee Healthcare had not opened a single new clinic in 15 months and that an umbrella company, Worldwide Health and Wellness Centres Limited, was showing a £7.7 million loss on its accounts.

Three months later, in June last year, all the UK clinics were shut down and the doors padlocked, with staff owed wages. Dr Lese and her management team said in a letter to employees that they had “reached the difficult decision, based on professional advice, for Mee Healthcare to cease trading with immediate effect”.

The letter from Dr Lese to investors, seen by The Telegraph, discloses there is no money left in Mee Healthcare, or any of its affiliated companies.

It said: “We continue to await the final actions of the liquidator, however, in the interest of the investors and tax preparation needs, the Investment Committee of the Allele Fund formally met on Friday January 8 2016.

“It was determined based on the information that we have at this time that the current value of the equity investments into Worldwide Healthcare and Wellness Centres Ltd … by the Allele Fund is likely essentially zero.”

Dr Lese went on: “We have been informed by the liquidator that the liquidation process is in progress and is likely to continue through 2016.

“As previously indicated, it is expected that we will close the Allele Fund, as soon as practical.”

Dr Lese blamed The Sunday Telegraph article published in March last year for the collapse of Mee Healthcare. “A particularly harmful, deceptive and misleading article was published entitled 'Poorly start to Cherie Blair’s venture into healthcare’. In it, the newspaper published in written form and on the web multiple false statements and materially significantly misleading financial information.”

She accused this newspaper of “effectively doubling the losses” with the result that prospective investors pulled out of commitments; customers to Mee Healthcare centres dropped “substantially”; and “strategic buyers and investors” who were in negotiations all “backed out”.

The Sunday Telegraph sticks by its reporting of Mee’s losses and a complaint made by Dr Lese to the newspaper regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), ruled in favour of The Sunday Telegraph.

“The newspaper was entitled to express the view that the business had suffered a 'poorly start’,” Ipso said.

One investor, who lost $250,000 (£175,700) after being encouraged to invest in Allele in 2014, said: “The articles written in The Telegraph were very good journalism. Businesses fail but to blame The Telegraph is outrageous.

“I lost a lot of money. We were told this was a really successful concept with great prospects and expectation.”