Elisabetta and Francesca Grillo have been found not guilty of defrauding their former employers, Chef Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi. The pair who worked for Lawson and Saatchi were alleged to have used company credit cards to spend £685,000 (€820,000) on themselves, including spending money on designer shoes and clothes. The Italian sisters had been employed as PAs by the pair and worked closely with them. During the trial, the Grillos said that Lawson was a cocaine user and that she allowed them to use her accounts so that they would keep quiet about her drug use. When Saatchi heard about the drug allegations he wrote to Nigella saying: "Of course now the Grillos will get off on the basis that you and Mimi were so off your heads on drugs that you allowed the sisters to spend whatever they liked". Lawson said that her ex-husband had a temper and was "irritated" by her independence in their relationship. "He said he was going to destroy me and hunt me down," she said. "That was his words. His voice was shouting and he was banging on the table and accusing me of various things that were not true. "The more he got upset, the more I got frightened. You don't cross Charles Saatchi, everyone knows that." Lawson and Saatchi divorced earlier this year. The three-week trial consisted of a jury of seven men and five women.