Giovanni Di Stefano (born ) is an Italian-British businessman and convicted fraudster. He has been involved in legal cases for high-profile and notorious defendants worldwide. He has no legal qualifications, is barred from working in law in the UK, and is not registered to work as an advocate in the UK or Italy. He has been referred to as "The Devil's Advocate" for his claimed advocacy on behalf of such notorious clients as Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milošević. He was also a business associate of Željko Ražnatović, a Serbian paramilitary leader and indicted war criminal.
He has been convicted four times in Ireland and the United Kingdom of fraud and related criminal offences, serving a total of eight and a half years for convictions between 1975 and the late 1980s. He was described by a judge as "one of life's great swindlers". His most recent conviction was in March 2013 when he was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment after being found guilty or pleading guilty to 27 charges including deception, fraud and money laundering between 2001 and 2011 related to "tricking people into thinking he was a bona fide legal professional".
Life and career Di Stefano was born in the small town of Petrella Tifernina in Molise, southern Italy. When his father emigrated to the UK to work in a shoe factory, Giovanni and his mother followed, settling in Irchester, Northamptonshire, when Giovanni was six years old. He then went on to study at Wollaston Secondary Modern School and later spent one year at Wellingborough Grammar School (which later became Wrenn School). In his 1986 fraud trial and in his entry in Marquis Who's Who, he claimed that he had obtained a PhD in law from Cambridge University around this time, but this claim was later found to be without foundation. (registration required) In his 20s, he claimed to have 'earned a fortune importing videotapes' from Hong Kong. Despite living much of his early life in England, he considered himself an Italian. During this time at school, he was often called John, the English equivalent of Giovanni.
Di Stefano lived in Britain until 1989. He then moved to several locations: Los Angeles between 1989 and 1992. In 1992, his bid to buy the MGM movie studios failed, and he fled to Yugoslavia because that country's breakup had made it a war zone and nobody would look for him there. In Yugoslavia, he became a friend of its then-president Slobodan Milošević who granted him Yugoslav nationality with a Yugoslavian passport. Additionally, he became a spokesman, a business partner, and a personal legal representative of the Serbian warlord Arkan. He also served as general in the Serb Volunteer Guard (Arkan's Tigers), although he never fought. He stayed in Serbia until 1999; and later Italy from 1999 to 2011, while working in the UK as a lawyer. In 2011, he was arrested and extradited to the UK because he lacked the legal requisites necessary to work as a lawyer in the UK. In 2013, he was sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment in a UK prison.
Legal career Di Stefano had an office in Rome, the Studio Legale Internazionale. He is well documented, in the UK media, for defending "some of the country's most notorious villains". He once commented that he would "...defend Adolf Hitler or Satan." He says he "defends the indefensible", and his autobiography is called Defending the Indefensible. When asked about his motivation, he replied, "No one's ever asked, 'Does Satan have a case? Does he have a good case?'"
The Scotsman described Di Stefano as a "colourful and often controversial lawyer"; The Guardian has called him "surely the only man in the world to claim the personal friendship of Saddam Hussein and the personal enmity of Delia Smith", after a failed bid to buy Norwich City F.C.
Di Stefano used the Italian title "avvocato" ("advocate", analogous to an English lawyer) on his business card, and misled clients and the courts into believing that he was a qualified lawyer. On 27 March 2013, he was convicted on 25 charges including deception, fraud and money laundering between 2001 and 2011 by a jury at Southwark Crown Court in London. During the trial he had told the court of his links to Robert Mugabe, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein (whom he described as a "nice guy") and his "friendship" with the daughter of Slobodan Milošević.
He took up the avvocato title after a 2002 High Court ruling which allowed him to represent Nicholas van Hoogstraten in his manslaughter appeal.R (on the application of van Hoogstraten) v Governor of Belmarsh Prison 1 WLR 263, EWHC 1965 (Admin). In evidence, he admitted that he was not a qualified lawyer but that he only realised this "in hindsight" .
Di Stefano attracted clients after a BBC documentary entitled "Notorious" (see below); these included Paul Bush, jailed for life in 2003 for kidnapping and murder, whose wife paid £20,000 for legal services and, with others, £100,000 to di Stefano to secure bail for her husband – the money was received before Bush learned there was never any possibility of bail. Much of the money was never returned. Cocaine smuggler Laurent Penchef's parents paid di Stefano €10,000 in June 2005 for legal services, specifically CCRC and advice regarding repatriation to France; however, he was never given clear advice about how his 18-year jail sentence would be implemented in France, and no work was done taking his case to the CCRC. The money was sent to a bank in Rome by Penchef's parents, but prosecutor David Aaronberg QC said: "Mr Di Stefano did little or nothing to assist." "He was no more a qualified lawyer than he was a surgeon qualified to perform surgery or pilot qualified to fly an aeroplane", said Mr Aaronberg.
Notable claims Notable people whom Giovanni Di Stefano has claimed to represent include:
Serial killer Harold Shipman The Irish Independent commented "The law firm that represented Shipman later denied that di Stefano had acted for its client." Former President of Iraq Saddam Hussein; (only as part of his legal team in 2004, and only before the trial began) Close associate of Hussein Tariq Aziz; Jeremy Bamber, convicted of the White House Farm murders;BBC article and video interview for HARDtalk by David Jessel (first broadcast 2004-03-25) Businessman and criminal Nicholas van Hoogstraten; Irish gangsters Patrick Holland and John Gilligan;Shelbourne scraps talks with controversial Di Stefano Notorious prisoner Charles Bronson; Iraqi Ba’athist politician and military commander Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as Chemical Ali, whose death sentence Di Stefano tried, but failed, to overturn); Pop singer and serial sex-offender Gary Glitter; Ian Brady, one of the Moors murderers; Ian Strachan, one of the defendants in the 2007 royal blackmail plot.
He has written to the Parole Board requesting Great Train Robbery participant Ronnie Biggs's release on compassionate grounds.
In 2002, he managed to overturn a manslaughter conviction against Hoogstraten, getting him released from prison.
In January 2004, Di Stefano again came to fame when he claimed in television interviews to be acting for serial killer Harold Shipman. However, Shipman's lawyer said that Shipman had rejected Di Stefano's offer in May 2003, and that neither he nor any member of Shipman's family believed that Di Stefano was acting for Shipman. This, and an incident in a 2004 trial of John Palmer, prompted an investigation into Di Stefano's qualifications as lawyer (see "personal legal history" section).
On 17 March 2007, Di Stefano wrote to Lord Goldsmith (at that time the Attorney General for England and Wales) asking for leave to prosecute Judge Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman, who had sentenced Saddam Hussein, under the Geneva Conventions Act 1957. On 14 January 2008, Di Stefano was reported as saying "Hurried justice is no justice", after a claimed UK client, who had won £1million in the National Lottery, failed to attend court as a witness in an assault case. Judge Christopher Elwen jailed her for 14 days anyway.
In January 2007, Di Stefano asked the International Criminal Court to make a full investigation of the Al-Dujail trials of Saddam Hussein's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Iraq's judiciary head Awad Hamed al-Bandar. Di Stefano circulated a note handwritten by Barzan where he explains that he wasn't responsible for the killings at Dujail for which he was sentenced to death.
In October 2007, he complained that the investigation of Blackwater's civilian deaths on Iraq was unjust because they were forced to operate in climate and conditions that forced them to shoot first and ask questions later when they came under attack.
Also in October 2007, he argued that Iraqi officials had to accept a pardon application for Ali Hassan al-Majid (Chemical Ali) because the 30-day execution window set the trial had passed. The US military later refused to release Ali for his execution until the legal questions were answered. Ali was sentenced to death again in February 2008 for different charges. The execution was further delayed in December 2008 as a new trial was opened against him with further charges. Ali was executed on 25 January 2010, fulfilling eight death sentences..
In October 2007, Di Stefano asked the British Home Secretary for posthumous pardon of Hawley Harvey Crippen, who had been hanged for murder in 1910, on the basis of supposed new forensic evidence indicating that the body found was not that of his wife, and a letter from his wife that was sent after the date of the alleged murder and was never presented on the trial, and that he never murdered her. () The request was filed on behalf of the doctor's last living relative.
On 15 January 2008, Di Stefano said that he knew of a sixth victim of Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley called Jennifer Tighe. He said he had a photo of her, and intended to speak to Brady to see if the killer would confess to this latest allegation. On 21 January 2008, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) issued a statement saying that Jennifer Tighe was in fact alive and that "Mr Di Stefano has previously made claims regarding the Moors murders in the media but has not provided any detail to Greater Manchester Police."Moors murder 'victim' is 'alive , Greater Manchester Police – Accessed 26 January 2008 Di Stefano invited GMP to interview his client and to provide proper evidence that Tighe was still alive.Response from Giovanni Di Stefano to Greater Manchester police statement re Moors murders, Studio Legale Internazionale (21 January entry)
Moors murderer Ian Brady had been force-fed at a top security hospital since he started a hunger strike in September 1999. In September 2007, Brady applied via Di Stefano to be moved to a conventional jail where he intended to starve himself to death. Later, in November 2008, when Brady was still being force-fed, Giovanni accused the state of legally starving Brady to death by not giving him enough food. In 2009–2010, Di Stefano made appeals to move him to a Scottish prison so he can die there, a move that the Scottish government strongly opposed.
In September 2009, acting in the name of Manuel Noriega, Di Stefano presented an appeal to French president Nicolas Sarkozy, saying the ruling against Noriega had been incorrectly made in absentia.
In May 2010, he made an appeal on behalf of Benguit Omar, saying that he was wrongly convicted for the murder of Jong-Ok Shin.
In January 2011, Di Stefano reported that he had asked for Charles Manson's permission to represent him, in an application to review his trial based upon a violation of the 6th Amendment and a legal argument that had not been raised during Manson's trial, although he had still to get his reply. Around 26 January 2011, Di Stefano claimed to have filed an application with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of Manson claiming the same violations.
Personal legal history