David Mills, the estranged husband of Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell, has been found guilty of accepting a $600,000 bribe from Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, and sentenced in his absence to four and a half years in prison.
The Milanese court said the British lawyer and former Labour councillor accepted the money in return for lying under oath in two corruption trials against Mr Berlusconi, who has since invented a law making himself immune from prosecution. Mills then used the money to pay off a mortgage held jointly with his wife, deciding not to bother her pretty little head about it, and Ms Jowell somehow never noticed the sudden disappearance of hefty mortgage repayments from her monthly bank statements.
Mr Mills - who, coincidentally, estranged himself from Ms Jowell on the very day the British papers got hold of the story - says he will appeal, and has every confidence in the deep pockets of his lawyer, Federico Corrupti.
Ms Jowell, meanwhile, issued a statement claiming that she may have met Mr Mills briefly at a wedding in 1979, and pointed out that she had been totally exonerated of any wrongdoing by completely impartial parliamentary officials appointed by her very good friend Tony Blair.
Meanwhile, the scrupulously honest Mr Blair gratefully accepted a million dollars from an Israeli foundation for his totally unbiased work as Middle East peace envoy.
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