Blimey, Buffoon Berlusconi's Bad

[Jan Klimkowski]

This does of course link directly to Blair, Mills, British intelligence and the murky world of cosa nostra and P2.

Some glistening nuggets are discernible in the dense pieces below.

David Mills is the brother-in-law of Barbara Mills, formerly director of the Serious Fraud Office and formerly Director of Public Prosecutions.

Barbara Mills is married to John Mills, a leading Camden councillor and a business tycoon. David Mills is married to Tessa Jowell, and both are also former Camden councillors.

Tessa Jowell is a longtime Labour cabinet minister.

The father of David Mills was Kenneth Mills: "At the end of the war, Kenneth Mills was running MI5's operations from Gibraltar. Later, he was transferred to Jamaica and - according to a family legend - personally foiled an attempted revolution in Cuba. Its leader, Fidel Castro, survived to try again."

David Mills: The networker

He has loved to mix with the famous, in Britain and in Italy, but seemed to be blind to the risk

By Andy McSmith

Saturday, 25 February 2006

David Mackenzie Mills has a favourite saying: "Nothing exceeds like success!" He has known a lot of success, as a lawyer, linguist, occasional politician, polymath, socialite, amateur musician, father, grandfather and husband. There has also been a whiff of excess in a lot of what he has done, not least in his long involvement in the dangerous world of Italian politics and offshore bank accounts.


Now his exasperated wife, the Secretary of State for Culture, Tessa Jowell, has been privately saying that she wishes she could slap an Asbo on him, to restrain him from doing anything else that might get his name in the newspapers - here or in Italy.

The couple are just back from visiting their son in Florida, where their family break was disturbed by the wholly unexpected appearance of a Daily Mail journalist who hoped to extract more information about his Italian links.

He had been speaking freely to journalists, until his Italian lawyer told him to stop. He described himself to the Sunday Telegraph as "a complete idiot". Talking to The Independent he described one of his actions as "completely insane". But he has been consistent on two points - he is sure he has done nothing wrong; and none of the stories swirling around his name in any way involved his wife.

It is a story that began a quarter of a century ago, when a youngish barrister who was thinking that he might like a change of direction in his professional life met an English-speaking Italian named Marino Bastianini, who worked for one of Milan's leading law firms, Carnelutti Studio Legale Associato. Mr Bastianini persuaded him to become involved in supplying legal advice to Italian firms wanting to expand into Britain. Their association became so close and profitable that the youngest of Mr Mills's five children is named Matthew Marino in Mr Bastianini's honour.

The connection also inspired Mr Mills to learn Italian, which he did impressively quickly. He has a gift for languages, traceable to his boyhood, when his father, Kenneth, was a big league spy. At the end of the war, Kenneth Mills was running MI5's operations from Gibraltar. Later, he was transferred to Jamaica and - according to a family legend - personally foiled an attempted revolution in Cuba. Its leader, Fidel Castro, survived to try again.

Kenneth Mills had a house in Spain, and his son David, born in 1944, was speaking Spanish almost as soon as he learnt English. He added French and the classics, Greek and Latin, to his repertoire before going up to University College, Oxford, in the early 1960s, to read politics and economics.

David Mills's connection with Carnelutti brought him a huge number of Italian clients, including one famous connection that perhaps he now has cause to regret. Documents at Companies House show that in March 1980 he set up Reteitalia, whose principal activity was the purchase and sale of film rights. It was owned by an Italian holding company, Fininvest. The head of Fininvest - who was also briefly a director of Reteitalia - was Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi and his daughter visited London in 1995, and reportedly had a long meeting with David Mills in the plush surroundings of the Garrick Club.

One aspect of company law that interested Berlusconi and others was the use of offshore companies registered in tax havens like the Virgin Islands. To this end, Mr Mills set up a firm called CMM Corporate Services - standing for Carnelutti Mackenzie Mills - which he sold in June 1994 for £750,000, including, reputedly, £675,000 for his personal stake. He then set up his own firm, Mackenzie Mills, which merged in October 1995 with a high-class London firm called Withers, in which Mr Mills became senior partner. Withers' private and corporate clients included the Duke of Marlborough and Benetton.

He had an early warning 10 years ago of the sort of trouble his Italian links might land him in when the Public Prosecutor in Milan applied to the Home Secretary, Michael Howard, for British help in investigating bribery and corruption allegations involving Mr Berlusconi. The investigative trail had led the Italians to CMM Corporate Services, now operating out of Switzerland, under Italian management. No sooner had they applied to the Swiss authorities for help than the people who ran CMM moved out, shifting operations to an office in Regent Street. The Milanese prosecutors then asked Mr Howard, to arrange for the Regent Street offices to be raided. And they wanted the fraud squad to pay a call on Mr Mills at Withers.

When the Serious Fraud Office applied for a search warrant, they made it clear the only people being investigated were those who had been running CMM Corporate Services since Mr Mills sold it. The officer in charge told the magistrates that "in the case of Mr Mills, who is a professional man and a member of a highly respected professional firm, I believe that he would comply with a notice to produce such documents as he has in his possession". All that followed to disturb a working day at Withers was a gentlemanly visit by SFO officers and their Italian interpreters.

It is not surprising that SFO officials should be so clear about who David Mills was. He was the brother-in-law of their former director, Barbara Mills, who was by then Director of Public Prosecutions.

Dame Barbara is married to John Mills, a leading Camden councillor and a business tycoon who has probably made even more money than his brother. David Mills and Tessa Jowell are also former Camden councillors, which is how they met. Both had to go through difficult marriage break-ups, made worse by the resulting publicity when she stood for Labour in a parliamentary by-election, before they married in 1979 (below). David Mills had three children by his first marriage, and has had two by his second, and now has three grandchildren.

A more cautious man might have taken these early brushes with bad publicity as a warning of the trouble ahead, particularly after his wife became a senior government minister in 1997. Her elevation naturally extended Mr Mills's already impressive social contacts. When a Freedom of Information Act request disgorged the list of people who have dined at Chequers at taxpayers' expense, no one was surprised to find David Mills and Tessa Jowell on the list. He has also played golf frequently with Alastair Campbell. He has cooked for Ruth Rogers, of the River Café, and for Albert Roux, proprietor of Le Gavroche. He has dined with Elisabeth Murdoch and Matthew Freud. Peter Mandelson and David Blunkett have joined the stream of guests at his second home, in Gloucestershire. He is so Blairite that he even has the same heart condition as Tony Blair. He has loved to mix with the famous, in Britain and in Italy, but seemed to be blind to the accompanying risk.

"My father is a highly, highly intelligent man," one of his children said. "There has never been a question that I have asked my Dad that he didn't know how to answer. I grew up to the theme of Mozart clarinet solos that he used to play. He's a real polymath.

"With that kind of brilliance there comes a certain sense that success follows. He has lived in very rarefied circles for a very long time. He's great fun. He's very, very generous. There's nowhere that he doesn't have access to. With that comes a slightly unrealistic take on what you can get away with.

"Dad's finances have always been an absolutely closed book to any of the family. Most of the stuff we're reading now is news to all of us, including Tessa. He has not kept any of us in the loop."

The Labour Government was not many months old before Mr Mills received a warning about the publicity a minister's husband can attract. One of Labour's election promises was to end tobacco sponsorship of sport, but in November 1997, it emerged that the British Government was actually trying to protect Formula 1 racing from an EU-wide ban. Mr Mills was both legal adviser to and a former director of Benetton Formula 1. His wife, as Minister for Public Health, was responsible for government policy on smoking.

The resulting uproar put the couple's loyalty through a stern test. It was not then publicly known that it was not her idea to ask for an exemption for Formula 1. She had privately argued against it. After a few days in which the couple shut up and took the flak, they were saved by the much bigger furore that erupted when it emerged that the Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone had secretly donated £1m to Labour funds.

Then, as Italian prosecutors searched for the money trails leading to and from Silvio Berlusconi, Mr Mills was given another insight into how unpleasant life can be, even for a polymath who has known nothing but success all his life. He now has 14 filing cabinets full of documents forwarded by the Italian authorities, in which he has read statements made by people he has known for years, as business associates and - he imagined - as friends who, according to one of his children, "have sold him down the Swannee to save their own skins".

He gave evidence at Berlusconi's two trials, in 1997 and 1998, in which - to quote his own words in a now notorious letter to his accountants - he "told no lies but turned some tricky corners". The Italian prosecutors have dropped an allegation that he lied in court, but he certainly took a professional risk. Last week, he read Berlusconi was saying that they had never met but that Mills had "used my name to cover himself from the tax authorities in his own country".

Mr Berlusconi has claimed that the investigation into his finances is a left-wing plot. Mr Mills has been more self-flagellating. Overconfidence may have led him into some foolish actions, he admits, but he is adamant that he has done nothing against the law. On that point, he may have a tough time convincing a court in Italy.

A Life in Brief

BORN 1944

FAMILY Married to Tessa Jowell, two children, three from earlier marriage

CAREER Founder of Mackenzie Mills, merged with Withers in 1995. In 2001 joined law firm Gordon Dadds as an equity partner. Set up Mills Saint James in 2003.

HE SAYS "The way in which I had been able to give my evidence (I told no lies, but I turned some very tricky corners, to put it mildly) had kept Mr B out of a great deal of trouble that I would have landed him in if I had said all I knew."

THEY SAY "Somebody used my name to cover himself from the tax authorities in his own country and so as not to have to tell the partners of his legal practice exactly what he had pocketed." - Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Prime Minister.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people...67627.html

When Italian prosecutors went after Mills and Berlusconi, it was alleged by Italian prosecutors that the British government sabotaged the investigation.

Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell - remember him - came to Blair's rescue:

March 1, 2006

Cabinet chief will clear Jowell, but Tories call for wider inquiry

By Philip Webster, Political Editor, for Times Online

Tessa Jowell will survive as Culture Secretary tomorrow after an internal Whitehall inquiry concludes that she did not break the ministerial code of conduct over a complex financial deal involving her London home.

But after a torrid week in which the media spotlight has been thrown on the personal affairs of Ms Jowell and her husband David Mills, the inquiry will disclose that she did not refer to her permanent secretary a loan deal in 2004 of several hundred thousand pounds.

Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, will report amid confusion in the Government over how to respond to allegations, reported by The Times today, that the Home Office jeopardised the Italian investigation into Mr Mills by passing on information to the Rome Ministry of Justice.

After Tony Blair appeared to promise an inquiry into the claims, No 10 backtracked and said the matter had been dealt with by the Home Office.

Up until now it has been assumed that the loan taken out in 2004 was to enable Mr Mills to bring into Britain a payment of £350,000 which originated in Italy in 1999. Italian prosecutors have claimed that sum was a "bribe" to Mr Mills, an international lawyer, for helping Silvio Berlusconi in two corruption cases.

However, Ms Jowell's explanation to the inquiry was that the 2004 charge was to enable the couple to pay off the tax on the payment which Mr Mills appeared until then to have regarded as gift.

She is understood to have told Sir Gus that she knew nothing until 2004 about the original gift or payment and could not therefore have declared it before then.

When she did learn about it, she still did not declare it to her permanent secretary because it was not a gift and therefore a conflict of interest had not arisen. She has insisted throughout that the money was not from Signor Berlusconi.

Ms Jowell's explanation appears to have been accepted by the Cabinet Secretary. Tony Blair will fully back Ms Jowell tomorrow and appeal for her to be allowed to get on with her job.

Sir Gus has been unable to investigate the source of the money paid to Mr Mills because that is currently an issue for the Italian courts.

Ms Jowell is expected to issue a statement explaining her actions after Sir Gus's findings are released tomorrow, in a letter to Theresa May, the Shadow Culture Secretary.

The Conservatives tonight called for Sir Gus to give a judgment on the behaviour of the Home Office in the case of Mr Mills.

This followed complaints from the Italian prosecuting authorities that the Home Office had jeopardised its case against Mr Mills by revealing sensitive information to the Berlusconi government - the target of the probe.

In the Commons Tony Blair had appeared to promise an inquiry into the allegations against the Home Office but Downing Street later insisted this had been dealt with by the department itself.

It had claimed that normal procedures were followed when it dealt with Italian embassy in 2005 because extradition requests were handled by diplomatic channels.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said: "The allegations of the Italian prosecution are completely untrue.

"The fact is that there is a well established extradition procedure which operates with Italy as with other countries and we would follow all normal procedures.

"No request for extradition has come from Italy at this stage and hasn't done at any previous stage - but the fact is that the allegations that we've been in any sense un-co-operative are completely false."

The Prime Minister said in the Commons: "We will, of course, examine any allegations that are made and reply to them fully."

But No 10 later said Mr Blair was not indicating the extradition allegations would be investigated.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "He didn't widen the scope of the inquiry. All he was saying was that as allegations are made, of course Government will respond to allegations."

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, asked Sir Gus to look into the propriety of the Home Office's actions in the Mills case, which he described as "at best incompetent or at worst improper".

Noting Mr Blair's comments at Prime Minister's Questions, Mr Davis wrote:

"The Italian prosecuting authorities claim that the Home Office or its agencies effectively breached confidentiality of the investigations relating to a serious corruption case."

He backed the prosecutors' argument that the Home Office should have dealt directly with them on the matter, rather than go through the Italian Embassy.

"Clearly this is sensible," said Mr Davis.

"If this case involved a British government minister, the Home Office and the prosecuting authorities would normally take rigorous action to ensure that they did not receive privileged information that would give unfair advantage to that minister.

"The Italian authorities assert that this evidence has bearing on at least one other case and imply that the Home Office's actions could jeopardise their judicial process.

"If true, this action by the Home Office meets neither the letter nor the spirit of proper practice. Accordingly it is either at best incompetent or at worst improper. I would be grateful for your judgment on this."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/po...736170.ece