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U.K. Minister leaves husband over bribery allegations

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: A senior British Cabinet Minister, caught up in a controversy over her husband's allegedly murky financial dealings, has decided to leave him to stave off accusations of a conflict of interests.

The announcement that Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture, and her husband David Mills, a high-profile corporate lawyer who is being investigated in an alleged bribery scandal, were to separate came amid calls for Ms Jowell to resign though Prime Minister Tony Blair personally cleared of her any wrong-doing.

In a statement on Saturday, Mr Mills' solicitor David Kirk said Ms Jowell had been "angered'' and embarrassed by the bribery allegations surrounding her husband.

"This whole business has imposed a dreadful strain on my client and his marriage. He fully accepts responsibility for these pressures and for the situation into which he put his wife, who he knows is entirely blameless in all of this. He is as mortified as she has been angered by the embarrassment he has caused her. They hope that over time their relationship can be restored, but, given the current circumstances, they have agreed a period of separation."

Links to Berlusconi

Ms Jowell, a close friend of Mr Blair, was dragged into the controversy as her husband was being investigated by Italian authorities for allegedly accepting £350,000 from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's associates for "protecting'' him in a corruption case.

It was alleged that Ms Jowell was party to an arrangement under which her husband secured a loan on their jointly-owned home in London and paid it off with the money allegedly received from Mr Berlusconi's people.

The allegation, which surfaced last week, was investigated by the Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell. Ms Jowell acknowledged that she had signed the loan document but claimed that she was not aware of the source of the money which was used to pay it off.

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