David Mills, the husband of Tessa Jowell MP, has left his firm Gordon Dadds to become UK managing director and in-house lawyer for the private Iranian company that placed him at the heart of a political storm earlier this year.
Mills was recently revealed to have asked Baroness Symonds to help him secure a £125m aircraft deal for Iranian private trading company ILTC in 2001.
He has now left Gordon Dadds, where he was an equity partner, to work full time for the company.
Mills has also set up a new law firm called Mills Saint James, registered at the same address as ILTC, which is now trading under the new moniker BDIC.
Mills set up the law firm so that he could also continue providing some legal advice to his longstanding client Benetton. Both Mills Saint James and BDIC are ex-directory.
Mills said he left Gordon Dadds after BDIC made him an offer he could not refuse. He revealed that BDIC is about to purchase a UK bank and that he is looking to employ a network of retired City lawyers as consultants.
In the mid-1990s, an Italian tax fraud investigation looked into a company owned by Mills’ one-time client the Italian premier and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi.
The inquiry, which is being carried out by a group of Milan judges, has just been reopened.