Blair pictured with Kazakh dictator’s right-hand man
- Mark Hollingsworth
- May 2
- 5 min read
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.”