From porridge to snout in the trough: Chris Huhne cashing in on green energy industry he funded as a minister when he is released from prison Huhne's release from Leyhill prison is expected in the next few days He will take up a post at green company Nationwide Energy Services working for £437 an hour Once a multi-millionaire his financial status is now muddled and uncertain Once dubbed 'nine homes' his property portfolio is now down to just four Disgraced former cabinet minister Chris Huhne walking in the grounds of Leyhill prison in Gloucester When Chris Huhne walks free from Leyhill open prison in Gloucestershire he will be handed a £46 "resettlement grant" along with the dark suit, silk tie and navy trench coat he wore for sentencing at Southwark Crown Court just two months ago. Like any other ex-convict, the disgraced former Lib Dem Cabinet minister, whose release is expected in the next few days, will also be offered a taxpayer-funded travel warrant to take him from the open prison just outside Bristol to his home in Clerkenwell, central London. It may not be an easy trip. With his political career in tatters, his family life all but destroyed and his finances in a state of apparent disarray, he must try to rebuild his life under an unremitting public spotlight. After serving a quarter of an eight-month sentence for perverting the course of justice, in relation to a speeding offence, Huhne, 58, is said by friends to be "upbeat, but nervous" about the prospect of release. "I always say that coming out of prison is much harder than going into prison," says Jonathan Aitken, the former Tory minister, who was jailed in the Nineties for the same offence and has been corresponding with Huhne during his incarceration. There are a lot of subliminal fears, worries and concerns. Chris will be having the same sort of anxieties I had: will my friends still be there for me? Will relationships have changed? How will the world treat me? Aitken says Huhne seems outwardly cheerful. He has admitted in letters to having "found the experience of prison fascinating," if occasionally sobering. But he will not yet be entirely free: once outside, he must suffer the indignity of wearing an electronic ankle tag, which will ensure he keeps a nightly curfew for at least the next two months. He will also be required to visit a probation officer at least once a week. It won't all be plain sailing. On what is believed to be the day of his scheduled release, Huhne's most likely source of personal comfort, girlfriend Carina Trimingham, 46, is unlikely to be able to be on hand to lighten his load. The former PR woman, whose extra-marital fling with Huhne sparked the scandal that led to his downfall, is due to spend Monday sitting an exam. Huhne is expected to be met instead by his elderly father Peter, a wealthy former businessman. "Carina is studying for a law degree, with a view to becoming a solicitor, and however much she'd like to be around to cheer him up, these exams aren't easy to rearrange," says a friend of the couple. Huhne's release from Leyhill, the so-called "Savoy of Slammers" whose previous celebrity inmates include former EastEnders star Leslie Grantham and corrupt police officer Ali Dizaei, is unlikely to be witnessed by any other immediate family members. The former Energy Secretary Chris Huhne and his partner Carina Trimingham arriving at Southwark Crown Court where he was on trial for perverting the course of justice He is estranged from eldest son Nico, a handyman who has dropped his father's surname in favour of Courmouzis. That was the maiden name of his mother and Huhne's former wife Vicky Pryce, who was jailed alongside him for illegally accepting his speeding points. She is due to be freed from prison next week as well. Huhne is not believed to be on speaking terms with their younger son Peter, who sided with his mother during their marital breakdown in 2010 and who called his father "fat," "ghastly" and an "autistic piece of s***" in text messages read out during the court case. Only Lydia, Huhne's 23-year-old daughter, is believed to remain in regular contact with her father. But she has thus far chosen to remain out of the public eye, so it is doubtful she will be present on the day of his release. Yet, as he contemplates his new life on that long, anxious journey home, Huhne is unlikely to be downbeat. For whatever his struggles, this naturally ambitious, hugely self-confident and - apparently - still unrepentant former multi-millionaire is plotting a path back to prosperity. "I think my political career is very clearly over, but I think that I have other things to offer, doing other things, and I will," he told Channel 4 News in his last public interview, the night before being sent to prison. He did not elaborate on what those "other things" are. But some seem likely to take place 80 miles to the west of HMP Leyhill, on an industrial estate just outside Swansea. Hunhne and his ex-wife, Vicky Price were both sent to jail after she agreed to illegally accept his speeding points It is there, in the space of four years, that little-known company Nationwide Energy Services has grown from four to 600 employers, making millions of pounds by helping clients access generous Government grants to make their homes "greener." And Huhne, who devoted much of his political career to establishing these grants, recently became its most high-profile employee. In November, as he awaited trial (still professing his innocence), the former Energy Secretary was hired to "provide advice on business strategy and policy." His wage? A staggering £437 an hour. He negotiated a signing-on fee of £10,000 along with a monthly £3,500 retainer for his services. In return, according to his entry the Register of Members Interests, he was required to do eight hours work each month. That job is seen by friends as the first step in restoring the former journalist and City analyst's status as a professional success story. "Chris has always been fiercely, almost ridiculously ambitious, with huge self-belief and an almost autistic inability to grasp his own limitations," says a friend who has known him since his days at Oxford University. He has no desire to return to Fleet Street or the City. But he knows a lot about environmental issues, believes green industries are the next big thing and intends to cash in on that trend. Huhne was nicknamed 'nine homes' due to his extensive property portfolio. Now he is just down to just four, including this £1.2m house in Clerkenwell Other high-profile jailbirds have found God, written prison memoirs or become high-profile campaigners for penal reform, but Huhne is planning to devote the coming months to building what will be his fourth career, in Britain's evolving green sector. It could prove to be controversial, if his relationship with Nationwide Energy Services is anything to go by. Take, for example, the firm's decision to hire Huhne in the first place. When first announced, the deal raised eyebrows about the so-called "revolving door" between Whitehall and the private sector, which, according to critics, allows former public servants to "cash in" on privileged information. Huhne had, after all, devoted his final months in the Cabinet to unveiling the Coalition's Green Deal, which provides financial incentives to help people insulate their homes. And Nationwide Energy Services, which last year had a turnover of £16 million, derives much of its income from that Green Deal. Yet despite that awkward fact, Huhne's appointment was swiftly approved by the Cabinet Office's Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, whose duty is to guard against conflicts of interest. That wasn't the only headline-grabbing controversy to touch Nationwide Energy Services in recent months. In early March, Huhne's employer found itself "named and shamed" as one of the most prolific sources of unsolicited phone calls to homes in the country. Research revealed sales staff had made 1.6 million attempts to reach British households in the previous 12 months. Two of Huhne's former properties: A townhouse in Clapham (left) was handed over to Vicky Price in the divorce, and another (right) in Brixton was sold for £330,000 That makes Huhne's paymasters the seventh biggest source of telephonic "spam" in the country. Its parent company, Save Britain Money, owns eight other firms, some of which also profit from unsolicited sales calls, centring on mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) and debt consolidation. Later this year, employees will star in a fly-on-the-wall BBC 3 documentary following the lives of call-centre staff along with the firm's founder Neville Wilshire, a rotund former plumber who appears in a series of YouTube videos performing David Brent-style motivational exercises with staff. What did he think of Huhne's jail sentence? It's impossible to say: a spokesman refused to comment on the matter yesterday or to say whether Huhne would be appearing on the forthcoming BBC show. Huhne's decision to take their shilling seems like a strange PR move at a time when he has yet to begin the process of repairing his public image. However, given recent pressures on his finances, he may have had few options. At the height of his powers, Huhne was widely described as a multi-millionaire, after quitting a successful career in newspapers to found IBCA, a City firm that produced reports measuring the risk of investing in overseas companies. When he stood for the Lib Dem leadership in 2007, he was given the nickname "nine homes" on account of his wealth and property portfolio (though he publicly confessed to owning just seven). Those assets have, however, been significantly dented. The townhouse in Clapham - worth £2.5 million - where he and Vicky entertained politicians and journalists at their annual New Year party and raised their three children, along with two daughters from her previous marriage, was handed over during his 2010 divorce. This more modest property, In Huhne's old constituency home in Eastleigh, Hampshire, which neighbours say has been empty for months Two yuppie flats in Highbury, North London, which were rented to tenants, are no longer in his possession, and a third flat, in Lambeth, South London, was sold for £330,000 in 2009. His property firm, Castlepine, has been dissolved. Huhne's remaining holdings are believed to be two rental units in Oxfordshire and his modest former constituency home, a terrace house in Eastleigh, Hampshire, which neighbours say has been unoccupied for several months. His most valuable asset is a house in Clerkenwell, which he bought for £1.2 million last year and where he lives with Carina. But he also has an array of pressing liabilities. A friend says: "Chris has been through a divorce, which is always costly, he's forfeited his MP's salary and Carina isn't earning yet. She's also had to finance the equivalent of a divorce from Julie Bennett [her former civil partner, whom she left for Huhne in 2010]. And then there are the legal costs. On the face of things, it's a perfect financial storm. And at the centre of this storm are lawyers" bills. In addition to his defence costs, Huhne is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service for the £100,000 they say his prosecution - which he contested right up until the case come to court - has cost the taxpayer. He considers that fee to be "unjust and unreasonable" and has offered to pay £25,000. That case continues. Huhne is also being pursued for a five-figure sum by Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mail, over legal costs that our sister title, the Mail on Sunday, incurred during his trial. It fought Huhne's application to summons its news editor as a witness to disclose information regarding the source of its story on him getting Pryce to take his speeding points. Huhne has said he will be 'doing other things' on his release from prison rather than going back into politics, but hasn't said what those will be yet Huhne dropped the application when he pleaded guilty. Again, that claim has yet to be resolved. Meanwhile, Carina is counting the cost of a court defeat of her own after she lost a privacy and harassment case against the Mail last year. Though she vowed to appeal, that was dropped in March. Her legal fees in the case were covered by a no-win, no-fee arrangement. However, the Mail's ran to £400,000. Ms Trimingham took out insurance to cover the first £250,000 of this sum, but is being pursued for the shortfall. There is but one bright spot in Huhne's financial picture. In 2006, he bought a stake in Irisys, a technology firm that sells surveillance cameras that help stores count their shoppers. By 2007, that shareholding was reported to be worth £250,000. Last month, the private firm was formally dissolved after being brought out by a U.S. company called Fluke. Huhne, who retained his holding, is likely to have profited significantly from that deal. Ironically, Irisys counts Tesco as one of its high-profile clients. During his political career, Huhne was a vigorous critic of supermarket chains and the "surveillance state." But with his political life over, his reputation largely in tatters and a new business career on the horizon, Britain's most famous political jailbird is unlikely to be troubled by allegations of hypocrisy. For, as Huhne said just two months ago, no matter how far he falls, he still has "other things to offer." And, given his previous form, he'll stop at nothing to achieve them.