A LAW UNTO HIMSELF

Lawyer Giovanni Di Stefano's client list reads like a Who's Who of international villains: Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and Nicholas van Hoogstraten.

So why has he taken on a meagre child-maintenance case for fallen socialite Birgit Cunningham asks Alex da Silva

Although there are some question marks over the formal legal qualifications of Giovanni Di Stefano, there is no disputing that he has earned the nickname 'the devil's advocate'. The Anglo-Italian lawyer's infamous clients include Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and now, somewhat incongruously, the statuesque, blonde Roedeaneducated Birgit Cunningham, who is currently fighting her former lover Harry Nuttall for child maintenance.

He is Britain's most controversial criminal lawyer who made his name 'defending the indefensible', claiming Mussolini as his 'hero', declaring he would have jumped at the chance of defending Hitler and is looking forward to representing Osama bin Laden, whom he met in 1998.

His other clients have included Harold Shipman (he says Britain's worst serial killer's crimes are 'alleged') and ruthless property tycoon Nicholas van Hoogstraten, who was convicted of hiring two hit men to murder a former business partner. Di Stefano had the conviction overturned and casually says: 'I like Nick, although I admit some of his methods of getting tenants out, such as throwing a dustbin of rats through their window, were not very polite.' There's timeshare fraudster John 'Goldfinger' Palmer; murderer Jeremy Bamber (convicted in 1986 of shooting his adoptive parents, his sister Sheila 'Bambi' Caffell, and her two sons, so that he could get an inheritance); M25 'road rage' murderer Kenneth Noye; and the Serb warlord Arkan Raznatovic, who was responsible for the murder of thousands of Muslims.

'He was such a great man,' says Di Stefano of Arkan, who was assassinated in 2000.

When I meet Giovanni in the lobby of the Savoy, where he used to work as a waiter in the Seventies, he looks nothing like Al Pacino, despite being accompanied by a statuesque blonde called Nicky who works for him. With his Seventies-style glasses, thinning hair, sharp Italian suit, satellite-size mobile phone and conversational stream of expletives, he looks more like he's stepped off the set of Casino. Half De Niro, half Joe Pesci, with an Essex accent.

The Di Stefano offices are tucked away in a dark alley near St Paul's Cathedral. A historical plaque on the wall of his building commemorates the Great Fire of London in 1666.

The office is staffed entirely by tall blonde secretaries, paralegals, researchers and lawyers who could all be Miss World contestants.

But Di Stefano's legal career is, according to him, just 'my hobby'. He claims to have made a Pounds 200 million fortune starting, after his stint at the Savoy, by importing cheap video tapes from Hong Kong in the Eighties. He happily admits he has made much of his money through 'amoral' means he is a convicted multiple fraudster with a criminal record but he stresses he has not made his fortune illegally.

The bulk of it came from being one of the trio who attempted to buy the ailing MGM studios in Hollywood in 1992. 'We bought MGM for $1.27 billion, borrowed the money from Credit Lyonnais bank, but couldn't repay them and lost the company,' he says blithely. 'However, in the meantime, I had acquired assets within the company 40 cinemas in the UK called Cinema Five UK, for which I paid Pounds 8 million in 1989.

I sold them back to the bank for $249 million, so that took me into a different league financially.

'Both my business partners ended up in jail because they did not follow my guidance,' he continues. 'I was totally legal. Still, I was a little concerned about my safety after having effectively "taken" that kind of money from a bank. So I thought it best to go some place where nobody would come looking for me a war zone.' He moved to Yugoslavia, where his next investment was in the national airline which had been grounded because of the war. As Milosevic's lawyer, he got the President to get the airline going again. 'I trebled profits there. And now I am going back into the movie business. I am buying one of Europe's largest film libraries from Merrill Lynch because of a debt default.' How, I ask, does Di Stefano communicate with his most notorious client of the moment Saddam Hussein? There is a pause before he replies that it is all a bit complicated. Have you spoken to him? 'I can't answer that,' he says. 'But there was a letter written on 15 May where I was asked to be on the defence panel. I thought about it and I accepted. All I can tell you is that Mr Hussein is not well. His health has deteriorated quite badly.

There was an injury when he was arrested that has not been cured.' To communicate, Di Stefano writes an email which is subsequently transcribed into Arabic and then transmitted to the client. 'That is how we were able to plead for Mr Bigley's life, saying that Hussein did not support this action.'

He adds: 'I can't speak for Mr bin Laden because I haven't spoken to him for a while. But I am certain that Mr Al Zarqawi [the warlord who was responsible for Ken Bigley's death] does not act for bin Laden, Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein.

Saddam does not take hostages; he doesn't approve of that method. I consider it a gross impertinence that this man can be in jail for 12 months without being charged.' If bin Laden is found, Di Stefano hopes that his will be the first number he dials from his cell. 'Everyone needs a lawyer,' he says in his strong estuary accent, punctuated with F-word adjectives.

Di Stefano is 100 per cent Italian, although his family moved from Southern Italy to a council house in Northamptonshire in 1960. Indeed, he lacks any trace of an Italian accent, but it doesn't take very long before his Mediterranean charm radiates through. His father worked at a boot factory. 'I was kidnapped by my parents and brought to England. I didn't want to come here; I wanted to stay in Italy with my grandmother. I come from peasant stock. I am very proud of it.

'Being Italian, we weren't liked in rural England,' he explains. He likes to fight for the underdog, having been one all his life. He has never played by the rules and he is opaque when I bring up the question of whether he is even fully qualified as a lawyer. There have been accusations that he is not on the Italian bar association or legally recognised in the UK. During lunch he flashes various American bar council cards at me. 'I don't want to talk about it because I have litigation on that. You can see that I am admitted. I haven't brought my Italian card with me today but I am admitted.' His personal life is as unconventional as his professional persona. His current wife, a Croatian called Mirjana, lives in Rome. They have been married for over ten years, but he says he only lived with her for a year and is not suited to conventional marriage. 'We've always lived apart, and it's the same with all my other wives. My job takes me everywhere. I can't do nine to five.

I can't be the nice husband with slippers waiting by the fire.' He has five children 'mercifully not by the same woman!' Mikhail, 25, Antony, 23, a student, Anna Marie, 20, Milan, 19, who is 'studying business' in Cambridge (though not at the university), and a nine- year-old son, Gianni, who lives with his wife in Rome. Milan went to Gordonstoun until he had to leave when the fees weren't paid. Anna Marie, an unmarried mother like Birgit Cunningham, is living with her boyfriend in Cambridge. 'She does nothing, but hopefully she will change her life,' her father says.

It is to be hoped that Anna Marie never gets into the same situation as Birgit Cunningham.

Her case is certainly a departure for Di Stefano.

Birgit, the ex-LA flatmate of Elizabeth Hurley, is a single mother who lives in a cramped bedsit in a rough part of Notting Hill. She has handcuffed herself to the gates of Downing Street covered in fake blood to protest for the Green Party, and she nearly landed herself in jail for throwing a chocolate eclair in the face of then Agriculture Minister Nick Brown at a press conference. But there is no way her crimes are on a par with those of his usual suspects. 'I like making money out of some people to finance the Birgit-type cases,' he says. 'She has no fee. I will not take anything.' He approached Birgit, offering to represent her, after reading about her plight in a newspaper. She had gone to court to claim maintenance for her child and lost the case. She signed up with him the next day.

Di Stefano is not complimentary about his client's adversary, Old Etonian Harry Nuttall, a part-time racing driver who one day will be a baronet. 'When I see an errant father showing off at Tramp and Harry's Bar, who has an award against him of just Pounds 5.40 per week and has failed to pay that, and who has spent a huge amount on solicitors' fees, what appals me is that no sort of humanity seems to have entered into the man's head.' One almost feels sorry for Nuttall, a well-connected playboy who moves with London's A-list social crowd. Until Di Stefano decided to take on Birgit as a client a month ago, he was probably congratulating himself and his Pounds 300-an-hour legal team from top family lawyers Miles Preston for persuading the High Court on 27 October that, despite his lavish lifestyle, he had no money. The Pounds 2 million house off Queens Gate Terrace he lives in is in the name of his wife Dalit Cohen, a banker with Wachovia Bank and a former girlfriend of Ian Maxwell. He claimed that he couldn't afford to make any contribution for the upkeep of his two-and-half-year-old son, Jack.

Di Stefano has already managed to get an appeal set for the second week of January. 'Birgit was forced to represent herself,' he says. 'She should have never been put in that position.' He believes he can help. 'There is evidence of a very lavish lifestyle. Harry's defence is that he has no money, but that doesn't absolve you of your responsibility for a child. This is a child whom he has never wanted to see, and this is where I take umbrage. I personally have no axe to grind with Mr Nuttall. But there is an old saying: "He who f***s, pays."' Di Stefano says that if he does get a retrial, he will be hoping to settle out of court with a lump sum for Birgit which is in line with the sort of lifestyle that Harry and his wife enjoy. Harry's holidays are spent travelling with his friends to Cape Town in the winter and the Bahamas in the spring, where his father, Sir Nicholas Nuttall, lives as a wealthy tax exile with his fourth wife. And although he claims to be broke, Harry's employment prospects are on the up. In July he launched Jump Sports Marketing, which specialises in the distribution of car parts for Formula One racing cars.

Unable to afford her own representation during her first court case at the eleventh hour Legal Aid told her they could not represent her because they were worried they would lose the case she had to represent herself. Birgit had been studying law part-time at Westminster College. 'She did what any Old Roedeanian would do: she swotted,' says a friend. 'But cross-examining the father of your child must have been dreadful.' The week after Birgit lost her case she went into depression. Friends were turned away from her door. There were mutterings about suicide.

'Birgit was inconsolable about the fact that Harry wasted so much money on his lawyers, when that money could have gone to Jack,' says a close friend.

'I am worried she still loves Harry.' Meanwhile, society types keep wondering if Harry will ever do the gentlemanly thing and pay up for Jack. His Swedish wife Dalit is said to be behind his decision not to. She has also divided Harry's own family, many of whom wish Harry would simply bring an end to this tawdry affair.

Sir Nicholas Nuttall has visited his grandson Jack on several occasions.

'He is concerned about the hold Dalit has on his son,' says an old schoolfriend of Sir Nicholas. But the feud is unlikely to settle. 'Dalit is very wealthy. She has practically bought the boy,' says a friend.

'I just need reassurance that I can put my feet on the ground and put Jack into school,' says Birgit. 'I am a single mum dealing with cockroaches in my bedsit. My cupboard door has just fallen off. When you are living on Pounds 94a-week benefit you can't afford to fix anything.' When Birgit's father a former banker who lives in Surrey heard that a man with such an unsavoury reputation as Di Stefano's was taking up his daughter's case, he 'nearly had a heart attack'. 'Excellent, Dad, that is exactly the sort of representation I need right now,' said Birgit in response.

In October, Harry's solicitors contacted Birgit and offered her a deal: walk away and she would never be landed with his legal costs, which they stressed 'she would be paying for the rest of her life'. Birgit, in her usual rebellious manner, said, 'No, thank you,' believing she was on a winning streak. At the time, she was wrong. Whether she has more luck now with the devil's advocate on her side remains to be seen.

(c)2004. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.