Thatcher and the Kazakhstan connection

Borat, aka Sacha Baron Cohen, has not been the only colourful figure to visit the despotic regime of Kazakhstan lately. Sir Mark Thatcher, son of the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and a man who attracts trouble like mud, allegedly used his mother’s name to help secure a deal for himself there worth up to £300,000 a year to promote an oil company connected to the country’s dictatorial president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Thatcher travelled to Kazakhstan to meet the president in May 2004 with a letter of recommendation from his mother, according to the Sunday Times. The next day, he signed a deal in which he agreed to represent the interests of a Kazakh oil company, Ar-Oil, abroad in exchange for four quarterly payments of £75,000. Thatcher has confirmed the deal – though he says he only received a figure "more like £30,000" - but he denies a further claim by the newspaper that the contract also involved him lobbying on behalf of the repressive country itself.

According to Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov, an adviser to the president’s son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev, whose father was then the leading shareholder in Ar-Oil, the deal was also to represent the country’s interests generally. Dosmukhamedov, who claims to have been present at the meeting, told the Sunday Times: "Mark Thatcher stated to Nazarbayev that his family, his mother and himself, would be delighted to help him with his image internationally."

Thatcher confirmed that he had given the Kazakh president a supportive letter from his mother at a meeting at an airport. He said that the deal was terminated by August because he realised he would have to spend too long in the central Asian company.

Thatcher does run into problems away from home. He lived in America for a number of years but left for South Africa after he settled a civil legal action for alleged racketeering. Then, in South Africa, his marriage broke up and he was fined and given a four-year suspended sentence in 2005 after pleading guilty to unwittingly abetting Simon Mann’s infamous attempt at a coup in Equatorial Guinea.