‘I’ve had a great friendship with Tony Blair for many years and we both share the ideology of the Third Way.’

– PRESIDENT JUAN MANUEL SANTOS OF COLOMBIA IN LONDON, JULY 2010.

Tony Blair Associates does much less business on the American continent than in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. But it does have, to our knowledge, two South American public-sector clients and one US commercial client.

At the World Economic Forum Summit in Rio de Janeiro in April 2011, Tony Blair met Erik Camarano, the chief executive of a free-market consultancy, Movimento Brasil Competitivo (MBC), and within months was proposing that they go into business together to seek work in Mr Camarano’s home state of São Paulo in Brazil. The previous day, en route to Rio, he met his old Colombian chum Juan Manuel Santos, now the president of his country, who was already a client.

It took a year, but Camarano and Blair’s partnership eventually landed a contract worth, on Camarano’s figures, almost £4 million a year to advise the state government of São Paulo, the economic powerhouse behind Brazil’s rapidly growing economy. About £2 million had been earmarked for travel and accommodation costs and Blair’s fees, according to Camarano. The sum is disputed by Blair’s office, but, as usual, it does not offer an alternative figure.

‘We first had contact with Mr Blair at the World Economic Forum last year,’ Camarano told the Daily Telegraph. ‘We were then approached by him and he now has an office in São Paulo. He wanted to bring his expertise to Brazil.

‘He saw that Brazil was coming to a state of maturity where we could make use of his experience.

‘The situation in São Paulo is very specific. It’s different from other states in Brazil where sometimes a lack of money is the crucial question. In São Paulo you do have resources, you have a huge public budget and you have a huge amount of resources to invest from the public sector.’

Blair’s South American office is run by Joe Capp, a former senior employee with the consultancy McKinsey, and the project in São Paulo state, an area larger than the UK and with a population of more than 40 million, is costing 12 million Brazilian reals (£3.7 million), according to Camarano, whose company receives only 10 per cent of the fee.

Camarano said that around 40 per cent would go in taxes, because his office would be hiring foreign services. ‘I would say that, of the remaining part, which is maybe 6–7 million reals (£1.8–£2.1 million), one part is logistics – which is international travelling, the consulting involved, lodging, accommodations – and then there is a part that is the fee for his office for the consulting work.’

Camarano said that the consulting group would have a large number of experts in fields such as transport, security, education and health.

A São Paulo state spokesman told the newspaper, ‘The company of the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is advising the government of São Paulo in its long-term planning.

‘This is being done in partnership with the Movimento Brasil Competitivo, a private organisation that is bearing all the costs of the consultation.’1

Erik Camarano’s Brazilian Competitiveness Movement (the Movimento Brasil Competitivo mentioned above) is a Brazilian NGO certified as ‘Organization of the Civil Society for the Public Interest’, which works to improve competitiveness in the public and private sectors in Brazil.

The other South American client Blair met in the period around the Rio de Janeiro conference in April 2011 was his ‘close friend’, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia. A day before the Rio meeting began, Blair was in Colombia meeting Santos. These two men go back a very long way. In 1999, when Blair had been Prime Minister for only two years and Santos was the hardline right-wing Minister of Foreign Trade in Colombia, they collaborated on a book. It was called, naturally, The Third Way – An Alternative for Colombia.

In July 2010 when, as the recently elected president of Colombia, Santos was in London to meet the recently elected British Prime Minister David Cameron, he looked in at Tony Blair’s office first. After the twenty-minute meeting Santos told newspapers, ‘I’ve had a great friendship with Tony Blair for many years and we both share the ideology of the Third Way. In my campaign I have said that my government would be close to the Third Way, which is useful not only to Colombia but to the whole world, especially after the financial crisis of 2008.’ The Colombian contract came Blair’s way just eight months later.

 

Blair’s consultancy business is less active in North America, but the month before that 2010 meeting with Santos he had signed a £700,000-a-year contract to advise Khosla Ventures, founded by Indian-American billionaire Vinod Khosla and based in California’s Silicon Valley. Khosla Ventures invests in green technology.

Its mission is to ‘assist great entrepreneurs determined to build companies with lasting significance.’ Khosla says his goal is ‘to be the best assistant there is for anybody trying to build a large, technology-oriented company.’

It is not at all clear what Khosla needs Blair for. The former PM has no expertise in green technology or management consultancy, and it is not immediately obvious what use Khosla might have for his expertise in governance and government relations. In fact, the only area of government relations Khosla seems to be involved in concerns a public beach in California which he has apparently decided to annex.

All California beaches are, by law, public between the ocean and the high-tide mark – but you have to be able to get to them. The previous owners of Martins Beach let people use the road to the beach on payment of a small fee, but Khosla has bought the land and put up a sign that says, ‘Private Property: Keep Out’.

People have been coming to Martins Beach for decades. There are public toilets, a café and a car park. The California Coastal Commission has tried to sort the issue out with Khosla, but he is not, apparently, interested in negotiation.2

Doing a deal with the state of California is something Blair might have some useful advice on. But, in California, a billionaire can quickly exhaust the legal resources of a small, underfunded state agency without the need for the political sophistication of a former British Prime Minister.

While business in North and South America is not as extensive as it is with the rest of the world, it shows a similar pattern: much of the money for Blair’s services comes from old chums.