PROSECUTORS in Milan asked a judge yesterday to lay charges of bribery and perjury against David Mills and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister.

“Here it comes, just in time for the election,” said Paolo Bonaiuti, Signor Berlusconi’s spokesman, yesterday.

The prosecutors’ decision is also seen as a blow to Tony Blair, who has treated Signor Berlusconi as a friend and ally and has defended his Cabinet colleague Tessa Jowell, Mr Mills’s now-estranged wife, against allegations that she knew at least in part about her husband’s allegedly questionable business arrangements as a corporate lawyer for Signor Berlusconi’s company Fininvest.

Signor Berlusconi, who had been investigated for corruption 12 times when he won power in 2001, faces an election on April 9-10, and is trailing in the polls behind Romano Prodi, of the Centre Left.

He is shortly to send 12 million Italian households a 160-page illustrated account of his time in power: The True Italian Story: Behind the Scenes of the Berlusconi Government. The book is printed by Mondadori, the publishing house that Signor Berlusconi owns — along with three TV channels, AC Milan, the newspaper Il Giornale and an advertising company. Signor Boniauti accused the prosecutors of working “in tandem” with the newspaper Corriere della Sera, which endorsed the Centre Left this week.

Fabio de Pasquale and Alfredo Robledo, the prosecutors, deny any political motive and say that the timing is coincidental. Yesterday a blue trolley carrying 15,000 pages of evidence against Mr Mills and Signor Berlusconi was pushed by Signor de Pasquale’s secretary, Tanya, from his fourth-floor office in the Fascist-era Palace of Justice to the office three floors above of Fabio Paparella, the judge hearing the case. Signor Paparella, who has been a Milan judge hearing corruption cases for a quarter of a century, is expected to decide next week whether to lay charges and set a date for a preliminary hearing.

Mr Mills is accused of having accepted a bribe of “at least $600,000” from Signor Berlusconi to give “helpful” testimony in corruption trials in 1997 and 1998. Prosecutors say that the allegation arose from a separate trial in which Signor Berlusconi is charged with tax fraud over the acquisition of Hollywood film rights by his Mediaset TV empire. Hearings in that trial resume after the election.

Mr Mills denies receiving any bribe. Instead he claims that the $600,000 came from a Bahamas account that he set up for Diego Attanasio, a Naples businessman involved in shipping. Mr Mills is said to have got to know Signor Attanasio in the 1990s when Signor Attanasio expressed an interest in investing in pleasureboats in Rome. The prosecutors allege that Mr Mills used accounts he set up for Signor Attanasio and other businessmen to move cash around the globe.

On Thursday the prosecutors rejected attempts by defence lawyers to delay the trial for two months to allow time for further inquiries into Mr Mills’s claim that the $600,000 came not from Signor Berlusconi but from Signor Attanasio. They hope to secure convictions by early 2008, as required by Italy’s “statute of limitations”.

This week Signor Berlusconi sought to distance himself from Mr Mills, who helped him to set up offshore companies over two decades. He said they had never had a working relationship.

In London yesterday Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, faced new demands to reopen inquiries into whether Ms Jowell had broken the Ministerial Code. She was recently cleared of any wrongdoing in connection with her husband’s financial affairs.

The Tory MP Nigel Evans has written to Sir Gus claiming that she had a conflict of interest because of shares in a pub chain linked to Mr Mills. Reports last weekend said that Mr Mills had bought shares in the Old Monk Company while his wife was a Public Health Minister involved in considering changes to the licensing laws.

Ms Jowell has denied that Mr Mills ever owned the shares. Mr Evans took up the matter after Sky News reported that Mr Mills received profits from the offshore company that did buy the shares and so benefited directly from them — a claim he has denied.