Mr Mills and the Mob, an offer he couldn't refuse?

ROME - David Mills had a spring in his step when he left London and headed for Milan to pay a visit to Italian investigators in July 2004.

"I thought I'd give them all they want and I'll come away smelling of roses," he said two weeks ago.

Today, the corporate lawyer knows that the aroma hanging over his affairs is not of flowers. Each day drags more detail from a thicket of hedge funds, offshore accounts and multiple mortgage applications that surrounds him.

Mills, now the estranged husband of British Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, was expected to be indicted for corruption today by the Milan magistrates he visited two years ago. At the case's centre is £344,000 ($883,000) that ended up in the Jowell domestic finances after a trip around the world's tax havens.

He has retracted a confession that the money was a bribe by Silvio Berlusconi sent via mutual friend Carlo Bernasconi.

Instead, he says it originated from a fund set up by Mills, the beneficiary of which is businessman Diego Attanasio, who has no known links to Berlusconi. It was to protect this client, Mills said, that he made up his "idiotic" bribe story.

Asked who had given him the money, he cited Attanasio.

But Attanasio denies making the payment and prosecutors have been unable to settle who deposited the funds in the account in 1997.

Until evidence is found it remains possible, they say, that it came from Berlusconi.

Naples shipbuilder Attanasio met Mills in Rome in the early 1990s and they became good friends. Mills is named as the administrator of Dendor, which was involved with Attanasio in a land deal in Sicily, for which he was jailed for bribery.

When Italian magistrates sought to interview Mills about the deal, he was less than forthcoming.

Investigator Filippio Spezia said: "Mills said in the Dendor case he was representing the interests of another Naples man, but he would not say who."

This man is of intense interest to those seeking to make a connection between Attanasio and Berlusconi.

Mill's connections with Sicilian Marcello dell'Utri have also raised eyebrows. In 1985, Mills appointed dell'Utri as director of a firm he had set up in London. Dell'Utri was jailed for nine years last year for colluding with the Cosa Nostra Mafia. Mills says he has never met dell'Utri, but it is impossible that he has not known of his reputation. Dell'Utri is one of Berlusconi's oldest friends. In the mid-1970s, Berlusconi bought the immense villa outside Milan that is still his main home, Villa Arcore, and dell'Utri lived there for a time.

In 1982, dell'Utri took over the running of Publitalia, Berlusconi's advertising firm, which revolutionised TV advertising in Italy. By cutting out conventional advertising agencies, the firm saw its turnover soar in the 1980s.

It was in the middle of that decade that Mills set up the British arm, appointing dell'Utri as its director.

The prosecution at dell'Utri's trial said that Berlusconi's main company, Fininvest, was paying a "friendly" Mafia donation.

Dell'Utri is also the founder of Forza Italia, Berlusconi's political party. During the trial, the prosecution claimed dell'Utri was useful to Berlusconi for his Mafia connections in Sicily.

The magistrates investigating Mills were reported last week to be looking afresh at Publitalia and dell'Utri.

Questions are being asked as to why Mills has not been investigated in Britain. He has, after all, brought large sums of money into the country in complex transactions from sources connected to a convicted criminal.

David Raynes, an anti-corruption adviser, said the evidence warranted an inquiry, as Mills had "not yet proved the money was honestly earned".

Whatever happens in the coming weeks, it seems unlikely Mills will realise his hope of regaining a rose-perfumed reputation. 


The Italians

Silvio Berlusconi
* Italian PM. Alleged to have rewarded Mills for "turning some tricky corners" in a previous trial.

Carlo Bernasconi
* Now dead. Close friend of Mills, who claimed Bernasconi had made the disputed payment.

Diego Attanasio
* Naples shipbuilder who Mills first claimed had given him the money. Attanasio denies it.

Marcello Dell'utr
* Sicilian politician and businessman convicted for his Mafia links whom Mills appointed to a Berlusconi-run firm in London in the 1980s.

- INDEPENDENT