Mills convicted: exclusive interview

David Mills has spoken for the first time about the letter that led to his conviction today by an Italian court for taking a bribe from the Italian prime minister.

He was sentenced to four-and-a-half years’ imprisonment. The sentence will not be put into effect unless and until all appeals have been exhausted. By then, it is likely to have expired under Italy’s statute of limitations.

Mills, 64, who separated three years ago from his wife Tessa Jowell, the Olympics minister, denied accepting $600,000 (then £350,000) to give false evidence against Silvio Berlusconi.

“The judge refused to drop the case against me even though my co-defendant is immune from prosecution,” he said in an interview for the rozenberg.net website. “This allows them to defeat the object of the immunity law by a proxy guilty verdict against the prime minister.”

Berlusconi had originally been a co-defendant in the long-running trial. But the case against him was put on hold after his government persuaded the Italian parliament to give immunity to the country’s four leading constitutional figures while they remained in office.

In February 2004, Mills, a lawyer, wrote a confidential letter to his accountant, Bob Drennan. It referred to a “Mr B” — assumed to be Berlusconi.

Mills told Drennan that “the way in which I had been able to give my evidence [in trials in 1998] ... 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”.

In the letter, Mills said: “I told no lies, but I turned some very tricky corners, to put it mildly.”

Drennan regarded himself as under an obligation to send this letter to the Serious Fraud Office in London, which passed it on to Italian investigators.

The letter referred to a sum of $600,000. Mills said he had been told he could treat this as “a long-term loan or a gift”. He regarded it as a gift, on which tax would not have been payable.

Recalling his “Dear Bob” letter this week, Mills said it followed a challenge by the Inland Revenue to Mills’s view that the payment was not taxable.

“The letter set out a scenario in which I attributed the $600,000 to Carlo Berlasconi, an old friend who worked for Silvio Berlusconi,” Mills told me.

“The scenario was designed to elicit advice on the tax issue and to protect the name of the actual source.” He was Diego Attanasio, a client and friend of Mills.

Mills did not want to identify Attanasio. But he took the view that what mattered to the Inland Revenue was whether the money was taxable or not.

During the months that followed, Mills settled matters with the taxman. He disclosed the source of the $600,000 but, since he could not prove that it was a gift, he agreed to pay tax on it.

Meanwhile, Mills was interviewed in Milan by an Italian examining magistrate, Fabio de Pasquale. After “10 hours of hectoring interview”, the lawyer feared he would be arrested for impeding the investigation if he denied what was in the letter.

“So I let him repeat in a statement what was in the Drennan letter — with some additions of his own — and signed it, knowing I could disprove it in due course,” Mills said.

In court, forensic accountants instructed by Mills produced a report supported by a mass of documents which, he said, “showed beyond doubt that the source of the money was indeed Attanasio”.

When the trial started in 2006, de Pasquale alleged that the money had been paid to Mills by Carlo Bernasconi on the orders of Silvio Berlusconi.

Eventually, said Mills, the prosecutor was unable to deny that the money had come from Attanasio. But then de Pasquale changed the charge, alleging that Mills had arranged, without Attanasio’s knowledge, for Attanasio’s money to be replaced by money from Berlusconi.

“According to de Pasquale, this might have taken place in a number of places,” said Mills. “But his preferred place was in the accounts of a Gibraltar law firm, where Attanasio held a number of trust funds.

“In his closing speech, de Pasquale said he had no proof — but he thought it was ‘very likely’ that the Gibraltar accounts had been the place where the ‘compensation’ took place,” Mills continued.

“This is despite the fact that the burden is on the prosecution to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt. No witness has ever mentioned the issue. There is no evidence of it, documentary or otherwise.”

In all the thousands of pages of evidence, the lawyer said, there was no corroboration of the prosecution case at all. “The evidence all corroborates my account. Not surprising, as it is true.”

Mills said the case was highly political — with left-wing Milan judges pitted against the right-wing Berlusconi government. De Pasquale wanted to be the first prosecutor to get a “result” against Berlusconi, where others had failed.

And Mills complained of a number of “irregularities” in the case:

• The presiding judge has been on anti-Berlusconi marches but refused to withdraw from the case.

• In Italy, the same prosecutor conducts the investigation, interviews the witnesses, prepares the case and presents it in court. “There has been no oversight and he has been able to plough on without having to justify his case to anyone,” Mills said.

• A CD containing the evidence was handed to the press before the trial started, in breach of strict court rules.

• The prosecution changed the charge after evidence had been heard from many of the witnesses — including Attanasio, who was supposed to have received a compensating payment from Berlusconi. So he was never asked about it.

• The court refused to allow defence lawyers to recall other relevant witnesses — or to call others, including Berlusconi — to disprove the compensation theory.

• The court decided that communications between Mills and his lawyer were admissible — though they would be privileged under English law.

Mills said that Italian law did not give his lawyers an opportunity to make a speech in mitigation of sentence after the verdict was delivered. But he pointed out that, unlike English law, Italian law treated a defendant as innocent until all appeals had been exhausted.

After the court ruling, Mills said: “I am naturally very disappointed by this verdict. I am completely innocent, but this is a highly political case.

“The prosecution have not produced evidence either of an agreement to give false evidence, of a payment to do so or of any falsity in the evidence. It is incredible.

“The judges have not yet given their reasons for their decision, so I cannot say how they dealt with the prosecutor’s own admission that he could not prove his case.

“I am hopeful that the verdict and sentence will be set aside on appeal, and am told that I will have excellent grounds for one.”

Ms Jowell gave Mills her backing today. “This is a terrible blow to David and, although we are separated, I have never doubted his innocence,” she said.

Posted at February 17, 2009 05:22 PM