Cherie Blair’s company “Omnia Strategy” was hired by Serbia over allegations that the Vucic government is ‘harassing independent television and internet company’.
Blair, who charges up to GBP 1000 an hour, was revealed as the first point of contact in the dispute and includes five of her employees as additional contacts.
The country’s president Aleksandar Vucic is regularly labeled an “autocrat and populist strongman”, amid evidence of crackdowns on media freedom, opposition, and criticism. Serbia has also fallen from 67th to 93rd in the World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters without Borders.
Vucic has been Serbia’s President since 2017 but first rose to prominence as the Minister of Information under Slobodan Milosevic. He was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for massacres, and genocide, and other offenses in Kosovo.
Serbia is considered a “hybrid-regime” by Freedom House and scored less than half of the points available for its protection of citizens’ freedoms.
Dutch media company United Group BV has initiated arbitration against Serbia. They claim, the government harassed them in favor of rival Telekom Srbija, a state-owned telecoms company.
They registered the case with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes and called for the protection of independent media in Serbia against ongoing government attacks. They said the actions of the government are purely to “tighten its grip on power.”
The Group said they had found documents that planned the “destruction” of the channel as the ultimate goal.
Blair’s husband Tony has been advising Serbia for the last six years in a contract that was originally funded by the UAE. He has denied that his long-term work with the Serbian government had any influence on the decision to bring on her company. He said she is a “well-established lawyer” whose firm has “clients all over the world”.
But there have been other instances where Cherie’s firm has advised government’s that Tony does as well. For example in Kazakhstan (where her husband’s organization gave Nursultan Nazarbayev reputational guidance following the death of 14 civilians. They were shot and killed while unarmed and protesting against him), Gambia, Rwanda, and Albania.
Cherie visited Albania in 2010 at the invitation of oil tycoon Rezart Taci, the same time her husband visited neighboring Kosovo. Taci was on trial. for the alleged assault of Mero Baze but denied having any part in the attack. By 2015, she was on the payroll for the incumbent Socialist Party Government, representing them in a trade dispute with a consortium comprising Rapiscan Systems and S2 Albania.
She was originally hired for almost half a million euros. Cherie was then given an extra EUR 150,000 for additional advice on the matter and to Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Her husband held “private meetings” in Albania in 2016. He has been an adviser to Rama for some time and when his government won the 2013 elections, he announced Blair would advise his government on structural reforms.
Questions were asked over who paid for Blair’s services and whether a formal contract was in place between him and the government. Rama always claimed that Blair was a volunteer that wasn’t costing taxpayers anything.
Tony Blair, a former British Prime Minister and was strongly criticized in the Chilcot Iraq War report. The findings of the report suggested he had lied about the war and the supposed threats to the UK and manipulated intelligence to justify the war. When asked about the findings of the report, Blair was unrepentant and said he would make the same choice again.
It’s believed that as many as 1.03 million people died in the subsequent war, many of which were civilians.
