Blair pictured with Kazakh dictator’s right-hand man

Former Labour leader met the now-jailed Karim Massimov in 2012 while act­ing as an advi­sor for his country’s government

Smiling for the cam­era, Sir Tony Blair has every right to be pleased with him­self. Pictured with the then prime min­is­ter of Kazakhstan, Sir Tony was less than a week away from sign­ing a sec­ond con­tract with the Kazakh gov­ern­ment that would earn his glob­al con­sul­tan­cy firm a report­ed $2 mil­lion (£1.5 mil­lion) a year.

Sir Tony met Karim Massimov, Kazakhstan’s longest serv­ing prime min­is­ter, in August 2012 when this pho­to­graph, which has only recent­ly come to light, was taken.

A month ear­li­er in July 2012, Sir Tony had giv­en Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan’s then auto­crat­ic ruler, advice on how to man­age his image in the wake of the deaths of 14 unarmed civil­ians, shot by his secu­ri­ty forces, who had been protest­ing against his regime.

At the time of this pho­to, Massimov was Mr Nazarbayev’s right-hand man and remained one of his clos­est aides for years. But he was sub­se­quent­ly removed from office by Mr Nazarbayev’s suc­ces­sor and charged with treason.

Massimov is cur­rent­ly in prison, after being sen­tenced to 18 years in jail over his alleged role in a coup. He is now fac­ing a sec­ond crim­i­nal case for mon­ey-laun­der­ing and large-scale bribery.

Blair Associates and Kazakhstan 

The exis­tence of the pho­to­graph is dis­closed in a report enti­tled Napoleon Complex released by a not-for-prof­it organ­i­sa­tion called Freedom for Eurasia, which alleges that Mr Massimov was corrupt.

The report accepts that the cas­es against Massimov in Kazakhstan have “not met inter­na­tion­al legal stan­dards”. The report accus­es Massimov of using “cor­rupt wealth” to enjoy lux­u­ry hol­i­days, pay the $200,000 cost of a Russian astrologer and even to pur­chase let­ters writ­ten by Napoleon that were val­ued at almost £100,000.

The inclu­sion of the pho­to­graph in the report risks dredg­ing up pre­vi­ous crit­i­cism of Sir Tony over the con­tracts his con­sul­tan­cy Tony Blair Associates (TBA) signed with Kazakhstan after he left Downing Street.

The lucra­tive deals helped to estab­lish Sir Tony as a lead­ing con­sul­tant of gov­ern­ments world­wide. The deal with Kazakhstan was one of the first that he estab­lished after resign­ing from Downing Street in 2007. He had first met Mr Nazarbayev while serv­ing in office.

The pho­to­graph was tak­en on Aug 17 2012, a week before the for­mer UK pre­mier had agreed a sec­ond con­tract with the Kazakh gov­ern­ment for “con­sul­tan­cy services”.

Documents seen by The Telegraph show that on Aug 23 – just six days lat­er – TBA signed a con­tract “relat­ing to the pro­vi­sion of con­sul­tan­cy services”.

It was the sec­ond con­tract – known as phase two – signed between the Kazakh gov­ern­ment and TBA. The phase three con­tract, signed two years lat­er, was worth $166,500 per month or $2 mil­lion a year.

The deal was admin­is­tered through a com­pa­ny called Windrush Ventures No3 LP, a lim­it­ed part­ner­ship reg­is­tered at Companies House in the UK, which trad­ed under the name Tony Blair Associates.

Sir Tony had been hired the pre­vi­ous year to pro­vide con­fi­den­tial polit­i­cal and PR advice to the Nazarbayev regime along with Alastair Campbell, his for­mer press sec­re­tary, and Jonathan Powell, Sir Tony’s chief of staff and now a senior advis­er to Sir Keir Starmer.

Sir Tony also deliv­ered “pri­vate strate­gic advice” to Mr Nazarbayev on how to avoid his image being tar­nished, notably in 2012 when 15 civil­ian pro­test­ers in Kazakhstan were killed by police.

In a let­ter first leaked to The Telegraph, Sir Tony told Mr Nazarbayev that the deaths “trag­ic though they were, should not obscure the enor­mous progress that Kazakhstan has made”.

Massimov, then prime min­is­ter, worked close­ly with Sir Tony’s con­sul­tan­cy com­pa­ny, which was report­ed­ly paid a total of $16 mil­lion until late 2015. TBA ceased work­ing with Kazakhstan after that point.

In May 2014, Sir Tony met Massimov to dis­cuss a finan­cial let­ter of pro­pos­al. The focus was to pro­vide “actu­al inter­na­tion­al polit­i­cal and posi­tion­ing sup­port direct­ly for Massimov as request­ed by him”, accord­ing to an email.

They met again in Kazakhstan the fol­low­ing year. The new report by Freedom for Eurasia alleges that Massimov abused his offi­cial posi­tion for cor­rupt ends.

The report states: “The evi­dence not only sug­gests Massimov per­son­al­ly enriched him­self at the expense of the Kazakh state but played a key part in the estab­lish­ment and con­tin­u­ance of a klep­toc­ra­cy under President Nazarbayev.”

The organ­i­sa­tion said it combed through thou­sands of emails belong­ing to Kazakh offi­cials, which were hacked in 2014,

Freedom for Eurasia said: “It would be dif­fi­cult for any­one to fal­si­fy a data leak con­tain­ing thou­sands of emails, and the leak’s authen­tic­i­ty is bol­stered by how hard the gov­ern­ment of Kazakhstan has tried to keep them out of the pub­lic domain.”

The report claims that the emails – dat­ed between 2009 and 2014 – appear to show as much as $20 mil­lion of spend­ing by Massimov. Some of this sum was spent on hol­i­days, includ­ing a trip to Disneyland Paris and a stay at the Ritz hotel, five prop­er­ties abroad, sev­er­al Mercedes-Benz cars and the Napoleon letters.

It also includes $202,000 paid to a Russian astrologer who pre­dict­ed that Hillary Clinton would become the US pres­i­dent in 2008 and that Moscow would no longer be the Russian cap­i­tal by 2018.

With Massimov now fac­ing a fresh crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, the report calls on for­eign gov­ern­ments, includ­ing the British Government, to launch their own inquiries to estab­lish whether any illic­it funds were spent in the UK and elsewhere.

‘Bribery allegations’

In 2022, Dame Margaret Hodge named Massimov in Parliament as impli­cat­ed in “alle­ga­tions of bribery” over a heli­copter deal. She called on the then Conservative gov­ern­ment to sanc­tion Massimov among oth­ers in Kazakhstan.

At the time, she told Parliament: “It is sure­ly up to us in the UK, the juris­dic­tion that has done so much to facil­i­tate cor­rup­tion in Kazakhstan, to act and hold these indi­vid­u­als to account.

Dame Margaret was appoint­ed the government’s new anti-cor­rup­tion tsar in the wake of Labour’s elec­tion vic­to­ry last year.

A spokesman for Sir Tony accused Freedom for Eurasia of using his name in the report to drum up pub­lic­i­ty for it. The spokesman said: “This is a clas­sic case of using Tony Blair’s name as click­bait by the so-called NGO Freedom For Eurasia.

“Mr Blair has no idea about and no con­nec­tion with any of the alle­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion here. Therefore the idea he will be ‘dragged into’ an inves­ti­ga­tion is absurd.

“And as we have repeat­ed­ly said about the work in Kazakhstan, which was fin­ished over a decade ago, it was not work on pub­lic rela­tions or ‘pro­mot­ing’ the Kazakhstan gov­ern­ment but work on eco­nom­ic and social reform in line with that done by oth­er inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions and mul­ti­lat­er­al institutions.

“Mr Blair was not ‘a paid advis­er’. The fee was not paid to him but to the organ­i­sa­tion and was for set­ting up a full-time team based in the country.”

Author: Mark Hollingsworth

02 May 2025 12:00pm BST

Original arti­cle: THE TELEGRAPH