THE corruption investigation into Tessa Jowell’s husband and the Italian Prime Minister reached the hallowed halls of the Garrick Club yesterday as prosecutors struggled to determine how closely the two men knew each other.

The all-male club, home to denizens of the media, legal and theatrical worlds, is alleged to have played host to a dinner between David Mills — a member — and Silvio Berlusconi and his daughter Marina in 1995, an Italian newspaper says.

If true, this would contradict statements at the weekend by Signor Berlusconi that he “did not know” Mr Mills and had “never known him”. The Italian leader is facing a general election on April 9 and is trying to distance himself from the international lawyer who worked for him for more than 20 years.

At the weekend Mr Mills told The Sunday Telegraph that he was put under huge pressure by a prosecutor who wanted a confession. “They were very, very hostile. At the end of ten hours they asked me again and I simply said, ‘Write something down and I will sign it,’” he said. Mr Mills’s lawyers have now “clarified” this statement to head off a further confrontation with the prosecutors, who vigorously deny using undue pressure.

His team put out a statement saying that the prosecutors “did not extort anything” from him.

The investigation centres on claims that Mr Mills accepted £350,000 to “protect” Signor Berlusconi in two trials in 1997 and 1998. Mr Mills denies the charges, claiming that he is guilty only of acting like a “complete idiot”. Signor Berlusconi says that the trial is a politically motivated smear and accuses “Communists” in the judiciary of trying to undermine his administration. He has also savaged his former associate in public, accusing Mr Mills of a tax dodge.

According to La Repubblica, David Barker, Mr Mills’s tax adviser, was asked by prosecutors to explain a note of his conversations with the lawyer that referred to a “meeting with B”.

Asked if this referred to Signor Berlusconi, Mr Barker replied: “Yes. I think Mills had said he met Mr B and his daughter.” The next entry read “Dinner at the Garrick”. Mr Barker said that this referred to “a dinner which Mills said he had with Berlusconi at the Garrick — proof of his friendship with Mr Berlusconi I believe”.

Mr Barker said it was “difficult to believe” that Signor Berlusconi had forgotten the encounter, given that the Garrick was an “impressive” venue.

In his own testimony to the prosecutors Mr Mills admitted that he had met Signor Berlusconi and his daughter Marina, now a senior executive in the Berlusconi media empire. He said he could not recall where the meeting had taken place, but thought that it might have been at Signor Berlusconi’s villa at Arcore, outside Milan.

Mr Mills told The Times last year that his relationship with Signor Berlusconi’s company had begun in the 1980s when he acted as company secretary for his offshore operations.

The judge in the case is expected to decide whether to charge Mr Mills and Signor Berlusconi on March 7.

Mr Mills, who was told several days ago that he was likely to be charged, said that the case against Signor Berlusconi “can’t be proved . . . in a million years. They haven’t got a shred of evidence”.

COMPANY MAN

How did an David Mills get involved with Signor Berlusconi?

• Documents filed at Companies House in Britain show that in March 1980 David Mills set up Reteitalia, a Fininvest company (the Italian Prime Minister’s holding company) owned by Silvio Berlusconi
• Between August 1981 and September 1983 Signor Berlusconi was one of the directors. The principal activity of the company was the purchase and sale of film rights
• Over the next 15 years Mr Mills set up a number of other companies for Fininvest, according to filings at Companies House. Some of these bought film rights from third parties, which they then sold to other companies owned by Signor Berlusconi
• Italian prosecutors believe that Signor Berlusconi used offshore companies to boost artificially the price of film rights to reduce the business’s tax liabilities
• The allegations that Mr Mills took a £350,000 bribe arise out of investigations into the acquisition of film rights. The investigation into the bribe is separate from the probe into the film rights, but they arise out of the same inquiry
• By the time David Mills set up Century One and Universal One, the two companies at the centre of the alleged tax fraud, he had been acting for Signor Berlusconi’s companies for ten years

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