By Sam Greenhill for The Daily Mail

Dozens of staff sacked in mass conference call

Staff told bosses to ‘rot in hell’ during conference call after announcement

Cherie Blair launched Mee Healthcare with American Gail Lese in 2011

Was funded via investment company in tax haven of the Cayman Islands

But four years on, only 11 stores opened and huge losses were racked up

Cherie Blair’s bid to match her husband’s riches met with disaster yesterday when her chain of healthcare shops went bust.

Eleven stores have closed with the loss of dozens of jobs.

Staff told bosses to ‘rot in hell’ during a heated conference call announcing the business was going into liquidation.

It is a massive setback for Mrs Blair, who launched Mee Healthcare with her American business partner Gail Lese in 2011 to exploit reforms opening up the NHS to private competition.

Mrs Blair, 60, a lifelong socialist, has always rejected claims that she was cashing in on NHS privatisation – even though Mee Healthcare was funded via an investment company in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands.

They announced bold plans to open 100 clinics in shopping centres and supermarkets offering a ‘one-stop shop’ for all healthcare needs from seeing a doctor to eye tests, dentistry, massage, physiotherapy, reflexology and chiropody.

But four years on only 11 stores had opened, huge losses were racked up, and now the whole chain has collapsed.

Staff were told the news in a conference call at 4pm on Thursday.

A letter to employees said: ‘In the last week, the management team has been in discussions with potential purchasers of the business. However these discussions have not achieved a sale of the business.

‘As a result, the management team has reached the difficult decision, based on professional advice, for Mee Healthcare to cease trading with immediate effect. For the avoidance of doubt, your current employment is terminated with immediate effect.’

38 full-time staff have lost their jobs as have a large, unspecified number of locum clinicians.

Managers were told to leave keys to the stores with the managers of the Sainsbury’s supermarkets in which the Mee shops are located.

One former employee said: ‘It all kicked off during the conference call. Some of the staff were really angry and swearing.

‘People were saying they have bills to pay and mortgages. One guy from the Northampton store told management it was a very disorganised company, and someone told them, ‘I hope you rot in hell’. One of the girls who worked at the Leeds shop was on the verge of crying.’

At least one staff member claims she has not been paid her May or June salary and in recent days there have been rumours of customers going into stores to ask why the glasses they ordered have not been delivered.

Some staff also said calls and emails to senior management were not being returned.

The ex-employee added: ‘The staff in the shops were really good, but it was badly run by management.’ Another said: ‘The turnover of staff was horrendous. There were issues with suppliers, staff, stock, it was an ongoing nightmare.’

Mee’s failure will be a blow to Mrs Blair, who recently quit her role as a judge to concentrate on her commercial ventures, and Harvard-educated Miss Lese, who previously managed a £58million fund for the Boston-based Fidelity Investments.

Their Cayman Islands investment company the Allele Fund, which funded Mee Healthcare, was set up by Mrs Blair and trained doctor Miss Lese in 2008. Its offshore status meant any tax it paid to the UK exchequer was significantly reduced.

Mee initially talked of persuading City investors to stump up £75million ‘in three to nine months’ to fund the clinics.

Embarrassingly, one investor who put in cash and was appointed to the fund’s advisory board, Tory MP Brooks Newmark, had to quit Westminster in disgrace after sending X-rated pictures of himself last October.

Mee opened stores across Britain including in Leeds, Ely, Bristol, King’s Lynn, Gravesend and Romford, but yesterday these were all shut. Mee was operated by a complex web of companies and collectively ran up losses of £10.6million for the year ending December 31, 2013, the most recent accounts available.

Last night Mrs Blair declined to comment. Miss Lese confirmed that Mee Healthcare had ceased trading, adding: ‘I am personally deeply disappointed, having dedicated all of my time and significant personal assets to the venture.

‘I’m extremely proud of what we achieved in helping our patients and customers, and I want to thank my colleagues sincerely for the excellent work we have done together.’

BUT DODGY STATES FILL HER PAY PACKET

Mrs Blair is now focusing her wealth-creating efforts on the strategy tried and tested by her husband Tony – touting herself as a consultant to repressive regimes.

Her firm, Omnia Strategy, is advising the Maldives government on ‘democracy consolidation’. But the country faces condemnation for human rights abuses, and locals say Mrs Blair’s consultants have been employed to ‘help wash the blood’ off president Abdulla Yameen’s hands.

Lucrative contracts have already been accepted from the oppressive Middle Eastern state of Bahrain, the autocratic regime in Kazakhstan and Gabon’s president Ali Bongo Ondimba.

Toby Cadman, partner at Omnia Strategy LLP, said the company ‘does not involve itself in domestic politics’ and had been appointed ‘to advise on legislative and constitutional reform’.

IMAGES:

Cherie Blair launched Mee Healthcare with her American business partner Gail Lese in 2011 to exploit reforms opening up the NHS to private competition

Cherie Blair’s business partner, Gail Lese (pictured) – their business has now gone into liquidation

For more on this story and video go to: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3132166/Cherie-Blair-s-chain-health-shops-funded-Cayman-Islands-goes-bust-sacks-dozens-staff-mass-conference-call.html#ixzz3dbjomApd