UK’s Culture Minister Tessa Jowell has split from her husband who is currently under investigation in Italy for fraud charges which also invloves the Italian Prime Minister.

It seems her husband David Mills who is a Tax Lawyer used his connections to the Prime Minister to gain business.

I have found an interesting report in the New Zealand Herald which gives a good overview of the story.

LONDON – British Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has decided to separate from her husband David Mills after it emerged that the businessman had attempted to trade on his relationship with Prime Minister Tony Blair.

However, the couple’s announcement yesterday that they were to live apart failed to win Jowell even a temporary reprieve from the intense pressure created by her husband’s business dealings.

Jowell will this week face calls to answer an urgent question in the House of Commons over her claims not to have known about a £344,000 ($906,000) payment to her husband, which is at the centre of an Italian corruption investigation.

The separation came after it was disclosed in a leaked letter that her husband told regulators in Dubai that he had the “sympathy” of Blair.

Mills said: “You will also know that I am married to a member of the Cabinet of this country … but I have the support and sympathy of very many people in public life, from the Prime Minister down.”

One close friend said of the minister: “She has been very emotional. Things like the Dubai letter clearly put Tessa in an embarrassing position.”

In a statement from Mills’ lawyer announcing the separation, the scale of his estranged wife’s anger was vividly underlined. “He is as mortified as she has been angered by the embarrassment he has caused her,” it said.

Allies denied that the statement was a cynical “career-saving move”.

Instead, friends said, it was a mutual decision to split for a trial period. There was little disguising Jowell’s fury, however, over what the statement termed the “dreadful strain”.

However, it was reported that Mills and Jowell consulted close friend Alastair Campbell on how to present news of their separation. Campbell’s involvement, if proved, will deepen Labour MPs’ cynicism.

Conservative backbenchers are determined to press her to explain why, if she was ignorant of the cash used to help pay off a mortgage on her London home, she signed an application for a second loan.

Jowell went to ground with friends yesterday, while her husband is thought to have left the country for a crucial meeting with his lawyers ahead of an expected indictment on corruption charges in Italy this week.

Blair conspicuously avoided questions on the issue yesterday. Many Labour MPs remain extremely uneasy about the world of large payments moving through overseas companies which the affair has exposed.

Mills, a corporate lawyer, is accused of receiving a £344,000 bribe in 2000 from Berlusconi over evidence he gave in a court case against him.

An investigation by the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, found Jowell should have declared the payment. Blair, however, accepted her explanation that she was told by her husband only four years later.

But fresh doubts were cast when it emerged that in 2002 she had signed papers for a second loan secured on the home in which she had to declare whether there were any other loans.

The thing is, Tessa Jowell has done this to protect her own career, I just wonder if this split has been pre-meditated in conjuction with the British Government to protect it from further sleeze.

Its going to be very interesting to see what happens this week when the Italian court decide whether David Mills gets called to court.