One of the two personal assistants accused of defrauding Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi of £685,000 has claimed that the TV cook, her art collector ex-husband and other witnesses at the trial have lied under oath.
Elisabetta Grillo, 41, and her sister, Francesca, 35, are accused of defrauding the Lawson and Saatchi household over a four-year period through the unauthorised use of credit cards and household accounts.
The pair claim Lawson allowed them to spend as they wished in exchange for them keeping her use of cocaine, class B drugs and prescription medication secret from Saatchi.
Lawson and others, however, have claimed that the credit cards issued to the sisters were not meant for personal expenditure, and should never have been used as such without authorisation, or to withdraw cash.
At the beginning of her second day of evidence at Isleworth crown court, Elisabetta Grillo was asked by Jane Carpenter, prosecuting: "Is it your evidence that Ms Lawson has lied to the court?"
To which she replied: "Yes."
"And Mr Saatchi?"
"Yes."
"And you're the one telling the truth?"
"I am."
"And the other PAs, have they lied as well?"
"Yes."
Earlier, Elisabetta Grillo also claimed that Lawson had allowed the children in the house to smoke marijuana.
The matter arose when Grillo was asked about a New York duty-free shop bill for £69.71 that she had paid for with her work credit card. "It was cigarettes for the children," she said.
Asked by Carpenter "what on Earth" she thought she was doing buying cigarettes for them, Grillo replied: "Well, if Nigella let the children smoke weed …" before Judge Robin Johnson interrupted the exchange.
On Thursday, Elisabetta Grillo – whom Lawson has described as her "rock" and a "stalwart" – said the cook had not been telling the truth when she said under oath that she had used cocaine on only seven occasions.
The court heard that debris from drug-taking – including paper wraps, rolled-up £20 notes and credit cards with white powder on them – was found around the Belgravia house Lawson shared with Saatchi as often as "every three days".
The court heard that even though she had told her solicitors, Grillo's original defence case statement in August did not include allegations of Lawson's drug use because she did not want them raised in court out of a "remnant of sympathy" for her former boss. The claims were included in an extra statement made in November.
The additional statement, read to the court by Grillo's barrister, Anthony Metzer QC, said: "The defendant will assert that the prosecution witness Nigella Lawson habitually indulged in the use of class A and class B drugs in addition to the abuse of prescription drugs throughout the time that the defendant was employed in the household.
"This evidence is of substantial importance as it explains why Ms Lawson initially consented, or appeared to consent, to the expenditure as the defendants were intimately connected to her private life and were aware of the drug use which she wanted to keep from her then husband Charles Saatchi.
"The defendant's case is that Ms Lawson's drug use and the defendant's knowledge of it materially affected her attitude to the defendant's spending and in turn her attitude to this prosecution.
"Whilst it is not the defendant's case that there was an explicit agreement for silence in return for acquiescence in expenditure, the intimate atmosphere created by such knowledge informed their relationship and what the defendant considered was permitted by Ms Lawson."
The statement said the defendant suggested the reason Lawson had maintained she did not consent to the spending was because of her "fear of Mr Saatchi" and concern that he would think the spending had been allowed, either expressly or implicitly, by Lawson because her drug use could be exposed.
While she did not mention the drug use originally, the additional statement said: "On mature reflection, given that this illicit use of drugs goes directly to her [Grillo's] defence of actual or implied consent, she now expressly instructs that this matter should be raised to ensure fairness in the proceedings."
Grillo repeatedly insisted that she had been allowed to use the card she had been given by Saatchi to withdraw cash and to make personal purchases authorised by Lawson. She said Lawson had often allowed her to treat herself using the card and had told her she could pay herself £50 every time she worked late.
"I have said this many times," said Grillo. "I worked very hard. I was part of the family and Nigella wanted to show me that she appreciated my job. I was part of the family for 14 years."
Asked by Carpenter if she had taken advantage of Lawson and Saatchi by using the card as she pleased, Grillo replied: "I would never do that. Not to Nigella. Not to Charles. Especially not to Charles."
Grillo provoked mirth in court when she told jurors that Saatchi had handed her cash and told her to get in a cab and buy copies of his bookfrom different shops across the capital in a bid to move it up the bestseller list.
"Charles had written a book and he wanted it high in the list," she said. "He gave me £200 and when I was on my break all afternoon I went in a taxi from east London to west London to buy books." She said she had made such buying trips four times a week.
While she visited bookshops, said Grillo, the other PAs were instructed to buy Saatchi's book on Amazon using the cards he had issued to them.
The case continues.
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