 Information from a new tranche of leak documents about secretive offshore firms has been published by a consortium of outlets including the guardian and the bbc. Following the Panama papers and the paradise papers this leak is branded the Pandora papers. Prominent figures in the documents include Tony and Cherie Blair from the leak we've learned that the blares saved three hundred thousand pounds in tax when they purchased a London townhouse costing six point four million pounds from a Bahraini minister. The blares were able to avoid paying the tax because instead of buying the house and paying the relevant stamp duty they bought the holding company which owned the house. That holding company had been owned by the Bahraini minister for industry it's based in the British Virgin Islands the Guardian report. While there was nothing illegal about the transaction and there is no evidence the blares proactively sought to avoid stamp duty the deal highlights a loophole that has enabled wealthy property owners not to pay a tax that is commonplace for many ordinary property buyers in the UK. The Guardian are quite clear it wasn't the blares idea to arrange the purchase so as to avoid stamp duty and Cherie Blair has claimed she had no knowledge of the building's owners and that this financial vehicle was the only way to purchase it. One might ask though if you're a former prime minister or their partner they bought it together and the property you want is being sold by a tax avoiding scheme and from a mysterious owner maybe you just shouldn't buy it. There are no surprises when it comes to Tony Barrow they have however low he goes it's I just take it as a given now it's like Berlusconi or something. I mean look it really does stretch the boundaries of plausibility to claim that you had no idea. That the multi million pound building that you are buying for your strategy company was being you know sold by a Bahraini minister through a British Virgin Islands tax haven thing right who goes I had no idea I was just splashing out the cash I had no idea who was selling it. Right that's that's I'm sorry and I refuse to believe that that either means that Cherie Blair is exceptionally stupid or that she thinks that we are exceptionally stupid right one of the two. As for this idea about you know public service and politicians we start the show really by talking about the conflict between labor and capital we're talking about labor in terms of workforce people who actually create value versus those who are able to expropriate it from workers. Now in a different way we're talking about the conflict between labor and capital and the role of the labor party within it so the only labor leader who's been able to win elections in the past 40 years is the one who purchased a multi million pound building via an offshore tax haven I think that tells you an awful lot about the kind of ideological compromises made by the labor party in order to be seen as. Electable Tony Blair is and always was an integral part of the establishment drenched in the culture of the establishment and drenched in the financial practices and values of the establishment. He is not someone who stood up for labor in that conflict between labor and capital what he was was an agent of capital. Exceeding to a few demands from labor in order to make sure that the elite could carry on extracting value dodging tax by exploiting loopholes getting richer at the expense of everybody else and he continued to do that just at a more accelerated pace when he left office. I mean my favorite fact about Tony Blair I think the one that is most telling about how politics works in this country is he's literally the godfather to Rupert Murdoch's child. Right so people are like oh no no you know the sun only backs the new labor rights will tell you the sun only back new labor because they were already on a winning streak it wasn't that Tony Blair made some sinister compromise some sinister deal with Rupert Murdoch. He literally was the godfather to his son you know you cannot get closer than that it's it's grotesque. Move on to another story from the Pandora papers this one concerns the conservatives and a leading Tory donor Mohammed a mercy has given nearly five hundred and twenty five thousand pounds of the party since. Twenty eighteen and he also according to the leaked papers had a key role negotiating what U.S. authorities have called a two hundred and twenty million dollar bribe at the time mercy was providing services to the boss of tealier Swedish telecom company who was seeking business in Uzbekistan. Negotiated the multi million pound payment to the daughter of Uzbekistan's then president fairly complicated story but this BBC graphic summarizes a mercies work. But tealier quite well so as you can see here the starting point for this story is as a Swedish company tealier they wanted more business in Uzbekistan that means they have to get the government of Uzbekistan on side. Coincidentally or otherwise tealier gives shares in its Uzbek subsidiary to Gulnara Karimova who is the daughter of the then Uzbek president her involvement is hidden behind an offshore company. Obviously the daughter of the president doesn't really want the share she wants some cash so tealier then offer to buy back most of Karamova shares and this is where Mohammed a mercy comes in he handles negotiations with the offshore company and the evidence here is an email from tealier's boss to a mercy I do not want to be involved on day to day negotiations so maybe you. Can handle it Mohammed mercy sure I agree. After that so negotiated by a mercy tealier pays Karamova's company two hundred and twenty million dollars US Department of Justice calls it a two hundred and twenty million pound of bribe payment. And we should say Mr. Mercy's lawyers say the offshore company had been vetted and approved by tealier. I didn't approve for what I suppose is the question that an approved as being close in relation to the Uzbek president so that that would help them get contracts in the country. A lot to say about this story one of the things for me is that you know when people say. Politics in this country is sort of all tied up with these really dodgy corrupt Russian or otherwise oligarchs was another story today about one of the Russian ones. It just makes like this country some kind of perfect because the numbers are so small you know like five hundred is all you need to sort of get the government to be on your side because you know people say oh we need to clamp down on tax avoiders. If one of the conservatives main sources of income is all of these people involved in tax avoidance that clearly is going to significantly affect their ability to clamp down on it. At the same time could we not just agree that you know we could if we publicly funded political parties we've got replaces a few million quid right it's like 0.0 0% or 0.0 0% whatever of government spending and then we could be free from all of these terrible oligarchs why don't we just why don't we just do that. Well look I mean political parties on hugely expensive operations in this country particularly when you compare it to you know other organizations right they're relatively cheap so you can buy influence if you're an oligarch and you can buy your way out of your tax obligations or the rules which would apply to everybody else for a remarkably small sum of money. So I was quite struck by the Richard Desmond Robert Jenrick thing where Richard Desmond got a property development approved within a time frame which meant that he skipped out on having to pay pay quite a big sum in tax towel Hamlet's Council towel Hamlet's where 55% of children are in poverty. Robert Jenrick helped expedite this property deal and it meant that he dodged having to pay millions in tax the amount which was donated to the Conservative Party was 12,000 pounds. So it's 12,000 pounds which avoids you multiple like millions tens of millions in tax. 12,000 pounds is nothing it's an absolute bargain so you're right these sums of money are really small. The thing that struck me though particularly when you were going through the sequencing of this bribe was the role of family and it kind of made me think about you know Tony Blair being Godfather to Rupert Murdoch's son and then you've got this element here of the role of the Uzbek's president's daughter is that the establishment really do run themselves like a mafia like a criminal gang. The structures and the hierarchies are the same. It might be on the right side of the law and trust me that's a technicality rather than a moral value. But the sort of networks of patronage the role of family the concentration of wealth power and influence within blood ties it's got mafia written all over it. The difference is is that it's legal. That's it. And that tells you something about how vast this power is rather than whether or not it is moral whether or not it's good for people whether or not it's good for society democracy the public at large.