Even lend him his villa in Tuscany, wasn’t it? Anyway, David Mills, Tessa Jowell’s estranged husband (ha!) is convicted for taking bribes:
David Mills, the estranged husband of Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, was given a jail sentence today for accepting a bribe of $600,000 (at the time £350,000) from Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, to give false evidence on his behalf in corruption trials.
[…]
Mills was accused of accepting the bribe from Mr Berlusconi for testimony that he gave as a tax lawyer in two corruption trials in 1997 and 1998. In a letter in 2004, Mills told his accountant, Bob Drennan: “I turned some very tricky corners, to put it mildly, and so kept Mr B out of a great deal of trouble he would have been in had I said all I knew.”
Mills, in a statement to the court last month, insisted that he had “never been corrupted by anyone” and apologised to Mr Berlusconi for causing him “trouble”. However, Gabriella Vanadia, a lawyer for the Prime Minister’s office, but not Mr Berlusconi personally, sided with the prosecution and told the court that the State accepted the allegation that Mr Mills had accepted the bribe.
Don’t worry, he’s unlikely to go to jail until the appeals process is exhausted, by which time the statue of limitations will have been reached. Can’t have the great and powerful go to jail like a common shoplifter, no can we?