Remember this?

Everyone will recall that Tessa Jowell, formerly a Blair Cabinet Minister and now minister for the Olympics found herself in a spot of bother two years ago with regard to her husband, David Mills, a tax lawyer working for Silvio Berlusconi. It seems that David had received $600,000 which he used to pay off a mortgage.

The money was used to pay off a joint mortgage David and Tessa had on their London home. David’s accountants referred the matter to the UK authorities as suspicious (they are legally obliged to do so) and it has been separately investigated by the Italian authorities investigating Silvio Berlusconi. The investigation has moved to London where it is being held in camera to shield it from public view (Why? I should like to know).

The Italian broadsheet Corriere della Sera claims to have a leaked report of the evidence, showing that the accountant Bob Drennan testified that David Mills wrote him a letter, backed up verbally, to Drennan, stating that he had ‘negotiated a few dangerous corners’ for Berlusconi and saved him from a sea of troubles which would have hit him had David Mills simply told the everything he knew. Mills reportedly said he had kept it quiet to shield his wife.

Now, here in Italy dodgy tax lawyers and attacks on Berlusconi by the largely left-wing magistrature are not really newsworthy items, but in England corruption allegations against a cabinet minister still (thankfully) are, so let’s concentrate on that.

One of the most common and straightforward forms of money laundering is, if you are especting money from a dodgy source, you remortgage a property for that sum (generating clean money from the bank) and repay the mortgage with the dirty money. Its disadvantage as a laundering system is that each step is discoverable: mortgages are registrable and therefore the information is a matter of public knowledge when they are made and again when the mortgage is released. With a joint mortgage both mortgagors have to sign the consent form, and of course are notified individually when the mortgage is satisfied.

There have been two mortgages.

First Ms Jowell said in a statement to reporters that she jointly owned the house in Warwickshire as well as that in London:

"What I did was sign a form that enabled the bank to take a charge on our house in order my husband could buy some investment he wanted. Both of our houses are in our joint names - it's as simple as that.
"I was perfectly happy in the division of our finances to sign the charge.
Later she says that the one in Warwickshire was solely in her husband’s name “My husband and I jointly own our family home in London. The house in Warwickshire belongs to my husband.

I have twice agreed to use our homes as security against a bank loan, and signed the relevant papers to do so.
On the first occasion, on 9th June 2000, my husband took out a loan using his Warwickshire house as security, to pay for home improvements and an investment made by him. Because the bank viewed me as a resident in the Warwickshire house, it required my formal agreement to this arrangement and I signed the relevant papers.
On the second occasion, 20th September 2000, my husband wanted to make an investment, and took out a loan using our London home as security. I signed the relevant papers. My husband has a number of investments and I knew there would be no difficulty in repaying the loan.
I knew nothing more about the nature of the investment.
I was not aware until recently that the loan had been repaid shortly after it was taken out, so our London home was no longer needed as security.”
Now, we are not talking about 75 years ago when the little woman at home could not be expected to understand anything as complex as banking or mortgages. This is an intelligent, educated woman – her website says she was educated at the universities of Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Goldsmith's, London. She is a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.
And she was at the time a cabinet minister.
So we are asked to believe that this woman did not know whether she owned a valuable property in Warwickshire jointly with her husband or not, even after the bank had reminded her that she was signing the mortgage deed because she was living in the property not because she owned it. We are asked to believe that she knew there would be no difficulty repaying the loan, even though she knew the other house had been mortgaged just three months earlier, and that she happily signed a very large mortgage over her London home because hubby said he wanted to make an investment – no need to bother your pretty little head about man’s things. And we are asked to believe she sees nothing strange in her husband borrowing long term money and repaying it very shortly afterwards, not once but twice: she does not find this suspicious at all.
I’m sorry but I have an uphill struggle believing this. But now Ms Jowell, having demonstrated her keen attention to financial detail was then put in charge of Britain’s Olympics arrangements, the budget for which has risen from £2.5 billion to £9.3 billion plus a £2.2 billion contingency fund. ‘The budget is on track’ she said on 10th December.
Really, really, this won’t do. It won’t.