Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Tony Blair have met three times now—most recently in April 2025. The first two were in Dubai and Baku, during COP summits. Sherzod Asadov, Uzbekistan’s presidential press secretary, says the cooperation with Blair’s institute is “systematic“. Tashkent frames it as a push for investors, digitalisation, and clean energy. But Blair’s actual record suggests a different set of services: paid PR for autocrats, personal letters pushing donors’ business deals, and damage-control advice after violent unrest.
The Kazakhstan Precedent
Blair’s firm, Tony Blair Associates, picked up a contract with Nursultan Nazarbayev’s government in 2011. A leaked conversation between Jeffrey Epstein and former Israeli PM Ehud Barak mentioned $11 million annually. Blair’s team called that figure rubbish and insisted the money went to the organisation, not his pocket.
In 2014, the Telegraph published excerpts from Blair’s correspondence with Kazakhstan’s leadership. The subject was Zhanaozen—a months-long oil workers’ strike that authorities broke up with lethal force. Blair wrote that the death of 14 protesters, “however tragic,” should not overshadow the country’s “huge progress.” His office claimed he was merely advising on economic modernisation. Human Rights Watch saw it differently: during those two years, Kazakhstan recorded a “marked decline” in fundamental freedoms.
In Astana, Blair spoke publicly about democratic participation and free media. In the Epstein leaks, he was helping Astana lobby the UN and other international bodies.
A Letter for £125,000
Then there is Steelgate. In 2001, while still prime minister, Blair wrote to Romania’s president, backing Lakshmi Mittal’s bid for Sidex Galați, the country’s largest steel mill. “I am delighted,” he wrote. The deal, he added, would help Romania join the EU.
A month earlier, Mittal had donated £125,000 to the Labour Party. The company was barely British—registered in the Netherlands Antilles, with just 100 UK employees out of 125,000 worldwide. In parliament, Blair faced questions about why he was pushing a foreign firm while British Corus (formerly British Steel) was cutting 6,000 jobs. He brushed it off as “Garbagegate” and blamed the British embassy in Bucharest. The ambassador later admitted the letter had sealed the deal.
Workers on the ground paid for it. By 2006, 25 people had died at the plant and 254 were injured. The same Mittal steel operation—ArcelorMittal Temirtau, later Mittal Steel Temirtau—went on to become notorious in Kazakhstan for fatal mining accidents.
TBI as a Brand
Blair shut down Tony Blair Associates in 2016 and launched the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. It is registered as a non-profit. In practice, it is the same consulting machine, just repackaged. The staff numbers 800. Revenue in 2021 hit $81 million. Clients include Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Vietnam.
In Central Asia, TBI is hiring. LinkedIn currently lists a Project Lead for Kazakhstan and an Associate for Uzbekistan. In Uzbekistan, the institute works through the Agency for Strategic Reforms. The First Deputy Minister of Economy and Finance sat down with TBI representatives back in May 2024. They talked about “international best practices” and “structural reforms.”
Whose Interests?
This is the man now offering Uzbekistan “support.” He helped a Kazakh ruler manage public perception after a crackdown. He leant on Romania for a donor. It is difficult to read his consulting work as philanthropy.
Tashkent wants Western capital, technology, and a credible reform narrative. Blair provides access to networks and a glossy seal of approval. The real cost, however, may not show up on any invoice. It may come due in reputational damage—and in the kind of judgment that treats political violence as an inconvenience to be managed rather than a problem to be condemned.
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