Lawyers use Nigella drug slur to defend fraud accused

A report in The Independent notes that the allegations were made by lawyers defending two Italian sisters, Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo, who worked as assistants to Lawson and her husband Charles Saatchi, in their London family home. They are accused of defrauding Lawson and Saatchi - who divorced in July, ending a 10-year marriage - of more than £300 000 while working as their assistants. But according to the assistants' testimony, Lawson had a verbal understanding with the Grillos that they could use Saatchi's company credit card for their personal use in return for keeping quiet about her drug use. The drug claims first emerged in a pre-court trial hearing on the 15 November when Anthony Metzer, representing Elisabetta Grillo, took the unusual step of lodging a 'bad character application' in order to question Lawson's reliability as a witness for the prosecution. According to the report, Metzer told the Crown Court the application 'relates to Lawson's alleged taking of class A and class B drugs and her unauthorised use of prescription drugs' and that it was kept as a 'guilty secret' from her husband. Jane Carpenter, for the prosecution, said: 'This is a totally scurrilous account which has been raised by the defence, and the timing is no coincidence at all.' She said that despite being arrested more than a year ago and charged in March, the sisters only made the drug allegations to the court this month. Full report in The Independent