She and husband Tony — who was also on this delightful family trip along with son Euan, 31, and daughter-in-law Suzanne — could of course have afforded to take it easy.
After all, the former prime minister is estimated to be worth anything between £50million and £100million, while such is the success of his wife’s business that staff costs alone are £2million.
But making money is in the Blair blood. So as well as attending lavish private dinners with her husband and powerful political figures on that Sri Lankan trip, Cherie was touting for business on behalf of Omnia Strategy, the international legal firm she runs from a seventh-floor office with no name plate overlooking London’s Hyde Park.
While her husband mingled with the country’s politicians and gave a lecture in ‘reconciliation’, boasting about his role in the Northern Ireland peace process, Cherie was reported to have offered her services to the government as a (presumably highly paid) adviser.
o add to this whirl of high-powered deal-making, she was also invited to speak at the Bar Association of Sri Lanka’s annual conference, a shindig attended by Sri Lankan grandees at another five-star hotel.
Cherie talked convincingly and apparently passionately about the need for those involved in making money to balance their business enterprises with human rights.
They should go hand in hand, she gravely told her audience. ‘You are only a mobile phone call away from a terrible reputation,’ she warned, which is why it was so important to have good business ethics.
Her concern for human rights is all very well, but it might come as a surprise to the former president of a nearby island state, also in the Indian Ocean.
Mohamed Nasheed was the first democratically elected president of the Maldives when he took office in 2008. His term ended abruptly four years later when he was deposed — at gunpoint, he claims — by a stooge of the dictator he had replaced, a dictator who had run a one-party state for 30 years.
Earlier this year, Nasheed was jailed for 13 years on terrorism charges. Amnesty International calls his imprisonment a ‘travesty of justice’, adding that it took place after a ‘politically motivated trial’ where he was deprived of proper legal representation and any defence witnesses.
Such is the international outrage over his treatment that no lesser human rights lawyer than Amal Clooney has flown to the Maldives to fight for his release pro bono (without asking for payment).
And where does Cherie Blair fit in to all this? She — or her Omnia Strategy legal firm — is pitted against Mrs Clooney, representing the Maldivian government.
Yet in contrast to Amal Clooney — and perhaps inevitably for a woman who was described last week by the Guardian as so insecure she has a ‘need’ to make lots of money — Omnia is charging handsomely for its services.
The prospect of Clooney vs Blair is certainly tantalising. And it not only raises concerns about Cherie Blair’s highly questionable choice of clients in return for lucrative fees, it also exposes the brutal reality of the archipelago, famed for its beaches and celebrity holidaymakers.
Earlier this month, the Mail reported how Cherie was representing Rwandan spy chief Karenzi Karake, who had been arrested in London as an alleged war criminal.
On a legal loophole, she helped Karake win his battle against extradition to Spain to face charges that he arranged massacres in Rwanda 21 years ago in which three Spanish aid workers died.
In addition, Karake was accused of organising the assassination of Lincolnshire solicitor Graham Turnbull, who had given up his job to teach in Africa. Omnia Strategy has accepted contracts from the oppressive Middle Eastern state of Bahrain and the autocratic regime in Kazakhstan.
So it should not surprise us that it is now taking money from the government of the Maldives — a country long accused of human rights abuses.
The Maldives is, in reality, a violent, dangerous place — particularly for those involved in politics.
That fact was underlined when Mrs Clooney’s local lawyer was stabbed in the head earlier this month in Male, the capital, by two unknown assailants who fled on motorbikes. There have been claims that the ‘hit’ was orchestrated by the secret police.
The country was ruled with an iron fist for three decades by Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, a former teacher in Islamic studies. But under pressure from the West and mass protests against his rule, he was forced to finally allow the elections that brought Nasheed to power in 2008.
Up until then, state-organised repression and torture were the order of the day. With snatch squads seizing political dissidents and thousands of opponents to the regime imprisoned without trial, the Maldives were branded a ‘tropical human rights hell’.
As soon as he first took office, Gayoom appointed members of his family to key jobs. One brother was leader of the security forces, and various other brothers and half-brothers were appointed to run key ministries such as the police and media.
Source:: DailyMail
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