Agency, followed by a court case where £5.6m of laundered cash was ordered to be seized from his family’s accounts. OpenDemocracy reported in February 2022 that Blackman tabled four pro-regime motions in the House and had written to two foreign secretaries, urging them to strengthen ties with Azerbaijan and condemn its opponent Armenia. Blackman told the Eye To Eye podcast in July 2020 that he "put down positions on behalf of good friends in Azerbaijan" on a regular basis, that [referring to July 2020 Armenian–Azerbaijani clashes] "in these types of conflicts ... whoever gets the best propaganda tends to grab the attention of the listeners and the viewers", adding that in this regard he has been "fed the information through the Azerbaijan embassy in the UK", praising the latter for being "very very helpful and proactive". Blackman urged the then foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, to take Azerbaijan’s side in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. On Blackman's Azerbaijan lobbying, Steve Goodrich from anti-corruption group Transparency International UK commented "It's pretty shocking if you've got MPs essentially being briefed by foreign embassies and then making contributions in the House based on what they've been advised to say." Hindu Forum of Britain Blackman attended a Diwali event held in October 2022 at the Houses of Parliament as a guest of the Hindu Forum of Britain. Nithya Atmadayananda, a prominent supporter of Nithyananda, was photographed with Blackman and the President of the Hindu Forum of Britain, Trupti Patel. The brochure for the event featured a full-page advert for Kailasa UK containing images of Nithyananda. Campaigns Blackman called for the adoption of plain packaging legislation for cigarettes, and supported Cameron's plan calling for energy companies to provide simplified energy bills to their customers. On 1 July 2015, Blackman was elected chair of the All Party Political Group on Smoking and Health, after serving as its secretary for several years. In 2012, when the Conservative Party launched a consultation into legalising same-sex marriages, Blackman suggested that David Cameron should resurrect Section 28, stating that he believed that "Section 28 was the right rules to have in school so that we should not in any way shape or form promote same-sex relationships" and said he would be "very opposed" to seeing teachers being forced to say same-sex relationships are equivalent to heterosexual relationships. In December 2012, David Cameron announced his approval for same-sex marriage. In response, on 7