Tony Blair signed a secret contract with a Saudi oil company worth £41,000 ($65,000)a month and two per cent commission on any lucrative deals he helped secure, it has been claimed.
The former prime minister reportedly agreed to help PetroSaudi through his company Tony Blair Associates in November 2010, according to documents obtained by the Sunday Times.
The Telegraph notes:
Mr Blair, who holds the diplomatic role of Middle East Peace Envoy, has faced repeated criticism in the past over his high earnings since leaving Downing Street.
His decision to send British troops into Iraq alongside America in 2003 proved highly controversial, triggering ministerial resignations at the time and becoming a defining moment in his premiership.
Report says Mexico leader was given mansion by train entrepreneur
ReplyDeleteThe sprawling mansion in the elegant hills on Mexico City’s western edge is said to be worth $7 million. Its floors and walls are white marble, it is equipped with spas and pools, and it has a particularly alluring feature: colored lighting that allows rooms to be flooded in orange or purple or pink.
Who lives in this palace of pricey if questionable taste, dubbed the White House?
According to a new report, none other than President Enrique Peña Nieto and his soap-star wife, Angelica Rivera.
He never paid for it, however. It belongs to a wealthy entrepreneur who was recently awarded one of the most lucrative public-works contracts in recent Mexican history, according to a months-long investigation published Sunday by a team of reporters led by prominent journalist Carmen Aristegui.
Quid pro quo? That is the suggestion from Aristegui’s report.
Aware the investigation was in the works, Peña Nieto’s government abruptly canceled the contract — a $4-billion deal to build a bullet train — on Friday. Yanking an already awarded bid was an unheard of move, commentators said.
That firm, in turn, is part of Grupo Higa, which is owned by longtime Peña Nieto friend Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantu, according to the report. Grupo Higa’s member companies received numerous building contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the state of Mexico while Peña Nieto was governor from 2005 to 2011.
More recently, on Nov. 3, a division of Grupo Higa was part of a Chinese-led consortium that won an uncontested bid for the bullet train megaproject. Sixteen other companies dropped out of the contest, citing, in some cases, untenable conditions and overly rushed deadlines.
http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-mansion-20141110-story.html