THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
Supping with Mr B
By Tobias Jones
(Filed: 26/02/2006)
Last year, I presented a series on Italian television about the country's entrepreneurs and was overwhelmed by offers of gifts. A man who crafts £2,700 handmade shoes offered to stitch me a pair for free. I was made to feel a bit of a prude for declining.
Generosity and largesse are an integral part of Italian custom and it can often seem impolite to refuse presents. More than a year later, I am still getting presents from a poultry magnate in Cesena, still receiving cigars from a meat packer in Modena with whom I once puffed Cohibas.
Last Christmas, a very expensive leather suitcase arrived from a famous Milanese designer. The list could go on and on. They have got my address and they send stuff. The presents sit under our stairs - a reminder that my own objectivity as a journalist could one day be compromised.
Of course, a box of cigars is a long way from the £350,000 that David Mills, the husband of the Labour Cabinet minister Tessa Jowell, is alleged to have received. The money was, in his words, a "long-term loan or a gift" from the "B organisation". "B" was widely assumed to refer to Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister.
But those cigars might be the thin end of the wedge, and the trouble is that in Italy you often do not know on which end of the wedge you are sat. The one thing for sure is that you will be showered with presents and it is very hard to distinguish what is innocent kindness and what is manipulative - or even corrupt.
Tony Blair's ability to draw a distinction has certainly been questioned in the past: it was revealed in July last year that the Prime Minister had, so far, received 18 luxury watches from Mr Berlusconi as well as four necklaces, two bracelets, two sets of earrings, two rings, a clock and a holdall.
An enduring, surreal image of Mr Blair's premiership will be that snapshot from 2004, a few weeks after magistrates had interrogated Mr Mills: the Prime Minister and his wife, Cherie, were walking through Sardinian crowds with 68-year-old Mr Berlusconi, who was sporting a beige bandana.
Mr Berlusconi looked like the cat that got the cream; the Blairs looked acutely embarrassed that their jet-set dream had turned out quite so silly. Many are now wondering what mention was made of Mr Mills when the Blairs stayed at Mr Berlusconi's Sardinian villa that summer.
Mr Mills finds himself at the centre of a story in which he seems isolated from both enemies and friends. The cast includes Mr Blair, Mr Berlusconi, substantial international money transfers, a Formula One impresario and a very strange letter.
The story broke eight days ago. The Italian broadsheet Corriere della Sera published what, it claimed, was the epistolary equivalent of a smoking gun. It was a letter from Mr Mills to his accountant, Bob Drennan of Rawlinson & Hunter, in which he sought fiscal advice about the gift from "the B organisation".
The gift was significant because Mr Mills has twice been called as a prosecution witness in trials concerning Mr Berlusconi's business affairs.
Were it proved that such a large sum was indeed from Mr Berlusconi's purse, it could raise questions about whether Mr Mills had opened himself to the charge of perjury and perverting the course of justice. He denies any allegations of wrongdoing.
It now emerges that Mr Mills was shown a copy of his fateful letter 18 months ago, in July 2004, during an interrogation by Italian magistrates. He claims that he "fell through the floor" when he realised that magistrates were in possession of his private correspondence. He then signed a confession in which he appears to have implicated the Italian prime minister: "Silvio Berlusconi, in recognition for the way I had protected him in various trials and investigations, had decided to put a sum of money my way."
Quite what sort of "protection" Mr Mills offered is only now beginning to emerge. In hearings in London in March 2003, Mr Mills said that his professional relationship with Mr Berlusconi began in 1989.
It has since been established that he incorporated Reteitalia Ltd on Mr Berlusconi's behalf in Britain in 1980. The company was a subsidiary of Reteitalia Srl, the company responsible for buying the rights of films which were then broadcast on Mr Berlusconi's television channels.
Mr Mills was the company secretary of Reteitalia Ltd from incorporation until 1989. He has been drawn into judicial investigation into Mr Berlusconi as a witness because the prosecutors wanted to know whether, as an expert in corporate law, he had any role in creating the shadowy "Group B", an assortment of 29 secretive companies which were absent from the consolidated accounts of Mr Berlusconi's Fininvest company.
Since the story broke last weekend, accusations and contradictions have flown in all directions. A day after publication of the letter, Mr Mills was publicly hung out to dry in Italy.
At a political rally in Verona, Mr Berlusconi pointedly said that someone had "taken advantage of my name to protect himself from the tax authorities in his own country".
Other contradictions concern who actually gave Mr Mills the money. He suggested in his confession that it came via an ally of Mr Berlusconi, the similarly named Carlo Bernasconi. Later, he suggested that it came through another of his Italian clients, a Neapolitan shipbuilder called Diego Attanasio.
Mr Attanasio, however, has this week refuted the claim, saying he was in prison at the time the payment was made since he had been under investigation for corruption. Meanwhile, Niccolò Ghedini, the beanpole politician who has been defending Mr Berlusconi for the past five years, hinted in a newspaper owned by Mr Berlusconi's brother that Mr Attanasio had not ruled out the possible scenario that the funds were taken without his knowledge.
"Attanasio said, 'I never gave him [the money], but I can't exclude the possibility that Mills took it'," Mr Ghedini said. The two co-accused in the case, Mr Mills and Mr Berlusconi, now appear to be bickering in public and every mellifluous phrase from "B's organisation" suddenly sounds like a threat.
Mr Mills has been struggling to fight the flak. Last week, he told this newspaper that the cross-examination in July 2004 had been "horrible". "They were very hostile," he said of the magistrates, alleging that his confession had been "forced". A day later, there was a retraction from Mr Mills's Italian lawyer, Federico Cecconi, who, realising the seriousness of such an allegation, told Corriere della Sera that his client had "never expressed himself in those terms".
On returning from holiday last Thursday, Mr Mills and Miss Jowell, the Culture Minister, found themselves at the centre of a growing international scandal. Talking to reporters outside their home in Camden, north London - which had been raided by police only a week before - Mr Mills appeared almost insouciant.
"This case has been going on for a very long time," he said with a smile. "I think we're getting very close to a conclusion." Reading between the lines, some suspect that Mr Mills is now preparing to testify against, rather than protect, Mr Berlusconi. Either way, Mr Mills will now be fighting a very tough battle on two fronts: against both the Milanese magistrates and against "B's organisation".
It would appear, on the surface, to be an open-and-shut case but things are rarely so simple in Italy. First, there are reasons to be suspicious about the timing of this story.
There has been low-level gossip about Mr Mills at Anglo-Italian dinner parties ever since the late 1990s. I rarely go to dinner in Rome or Milan without someone asking me about him. And it is true that small circulation magazines, such as Diario, have published articles in which Mr Mills's name appears and his role in setting up Mr Berlusconi's off-shore archipelago is examined.
Yet, until now, no Italian newspaper would touch the story. All of a sudden, with a general election little more than a month away, the alleged Berlusconi bribe is front-page news. Many suspect that Mr Mills's letter and confession were leaked at a time calculated to cause Mr Berlusconi maximum embarrassment.
Indeed, some sections of the judiciary stand accused of giustizialismo - the relentless pursuit of political opponents. Various magistrates have dedicated their professional lives to pinning something definitively on Mr Berlusconi; Mr Berlusconi, in turn, denounces them as Communists or as covert politicians. It is clear to many that Mr Mills is merely a pawn in a much larger game.
And yet, for all the attenuating circumstances, there remain details in which common sense casts doubt on Mr Mills's story so far. Few people earn so much money as to be uncertain as to the provenance of over half a million dollars. If he really is so wealthy that he does not know where such figures come from, he is either very fortunate or very foolish.
His recent suggestion that the incriminating letter to his accountants was not a factual case but an imaginary scenario, invented as a hypothetical case study, also seems puzzling. On reading the letter, it appears blunt and factual. It begins: "in brief, the relevant facts are as follows".
It would take a literary stylist, more than a lawyer, to invent a hypothesis which sounds so concrete. The tone is petulant; he complains about former partners in a law firm "pocketing most of the dividend". None of it appears fictitious and the suggestion that the smoking gun is only a water pistol sounds highly implausible.
Nor does the letter particularly endear Mr Mills to its Italian readers. When he speaks of another sum (this time £500,000) as "meagre compensation" for all the risks he had taken, one realises that he inhabits a different world.
The Italian reaction to the case has been fascinating. Those who love or loathe Mr Berlusconi have taken predictable sides, but there is a more subtle reaction.
Many Italians have been ashamed of business scandals in the past few years: there have been epic accounting crimes at Parmalat and Cirio, and even the Bank of Italy has been sullied by interfering directly in takeover bids, leading to the resignation of its governor.
British journalists, myself included, have for years conducted in-depth analyses of the ills of Italian economy in general, and of Mr Berlusconi in particular. Now that a British lawyer emerges as a protagonist in the Berlusconi saga some Italians have expressed bitter relief that perhaps not all the bad apples reside in their own country.
The story is given added interest by the fact that Mr Mills is at the epicentre of political and media power in Britain. He has dined with Mr Blair at Chequers, and he and Miss Jowell are neighbours and regular dinner guests of Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, in the Cotswolds.
Mr Attanasio was quoted in Italian newspapers this week saying that Mr Mills's connections were precisely the reason that everyone trusted him: "He is a lawyer in London, and he is the husband of one of Tony Blair's most senior colleagues. He was a person who you could trust completely." It's anyone's guess how much irony or threat those words carry.
Mr Mills is known as a cultured bon viveur: he plays the clarinet and has studied at the Courtauld Institute. But this is not the first time that he finds himself embroiled in negative publicity for the Government.
In 1997, while he had close business links to Flavio Briatore, the owner of Benetton, the Formula One team, and his wife, Ms Jowell, was the Public Health Minister, the Government reversed a decision to ban tobacco advertising in Formula One. (The idea was also floated this week, and quickly denied, that the mystery "gift" referred to in Mr Mills' letter had come through Mr Briatore).
Mr Berlusconi's lawyer, Mr Ghedini, was asked this week whether he thought that Mr Mills was foolish or dishonest. "Neither one nor the other," he replied. "I would simply define him as a person who was very frightened."
In the incriminating letter, Mr Mills admitted to being "worried" about the affair. And it is clear that, for all his swagger and avowed confidence in the Italian judiciary, being subject to Italian law fills him with dread: habeas corpus and a jury are not a part of normal procedure and he could face between three and eight years in prison.
I, too, am at the start of a court battle in Italy, accused of defaming a political extremist in a book I wrote. Whatever the truth of Mr Mills's case, I feel sympathy for any fellow defendant in an Italian court. Nor should he take any comfort from being English because the legal process is in no way lenient to foreigners - 32 per cent of all people in Italian prisons are non-Italians.
• Tobias Jones is the author of The Dark Heart of Italy (Faber & Faber)