SPOTLIGHT
Michelle Mone: The rise and fall of Scotland's
bra queen
27th
November
By Gabriel
McKay
Digital
Journalist
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23151671.michelle-mone-rise-fall-scotlands-bra-queen/
Love or
loathe Michelle Mone, she’s always been hard to ignore – the woman herself
would credit her business empire to her knack for attracting publicity.
The glare
of the public spotlight may not be resting so comfortably on the skin of the
bra tycoon though following allegations she and her family used PPE contracts
awarded by the British government as the Covid crisis raged to enrich themselves.
The
Conservative peer faces a standards investigation in the House of Lords, while
her ties to a company tasked with producing hospital gowns for the NHS are
being probed by law enforcement and the House of Lords.
It’s just
the latest twist in the tale of a self-proclaimed one-woman success story – a
story which has had plenty of twists and turns up to this point.
Raised in
the East End of Glasgow, Mone first came to prominence in 1999 with the launch
of the Ultimo bra, which the entrepreneur said was inspired by her experience
of wearing an uncomfortable cleavage-booster and realising she could come up
with a better design.
In May of
the following year Ultimo launched at the Sak’s Fifth Avenue store in New York
City, and it was claimed that Julia Roberts wore one of the bras for her role
in Erin Brockovich.
Mone and
her company MJM International would go on to launch a range of diet pills, as
well as partnering with the likes of ASDA, Debenham’s and doing modelling
campaigns with Kelly Brook, Gemma Atkinson and Mel B of the Spice Girls.
HeraldScotland:
Michelle Mone, centre, used her first Lords vote to oppose the delay to cut tax
credits
Close scrutiny
Almost from
the start of Mone’s entrepreneurial career there have been questions
surrounding the legitimacy of her much-vaunted achievements.
Her
business career started with Canadian beer brand Labatt, with the Scotswoman
admitting that she faked details on her CV to land the role.
Publicity
for Ultimo went through the roof thanks to reports that Julia Roberts had worn
one of the bras for her Oscar-winning turn in Erin Brockovich, though this has
been denied by several of the filmmakers.
A 2015
profile of Mone in European CEO stated that the actress herself had mentioned
the undergarment in her acceptance speech for the Academy Award but if she did
then it wasn’t on stage at the ceremony – the footage is freely available on
YouTube and features no mention of a bra.
MJM’s
‘Trimsecrets’ diet pills, produced in collaboration with Jan de Vries, were
described as having “no scientific basis or rationale” and while the entrepreneur
had claimed their efficacy had been proven in clinical trials when questioned
by The Guardian, Mone stated that the trial had in fact been a 63-person
questionnaire, for which she was unable to produce the results.
Ultimo losses
Questions
were also raised over the success of her business empire. Despite claims she
was worth £50m, MJM made losses of £780,000 in the 2013 financial year before
passing its assets to its parent company, Ultimo Brands, which also made a
loss.
A former
employee, Scott Kilday, was awarded £15,000 in compensation after discovering a
plant pot in his office had been bugged, ostensibly due to fears he was
planning to leave and work with Mone’s ex-husband, Michael.
Despite
those concerns, Mone began to establish herself as a political player. Setting
herself up as a staunch unionist, the businesswoman threatened to leave
Scotland if the SNP won the 2007 Holyrood election and was a firm advocate for
a No vote in the 2014 independence referendum.
Shortly
thereafter she was appointed to an unpaid role as the Conservative government’s
‘start-up czar’, which drew backlash from other entrepreneurs.
HeraldScotland:
Describing
Mone as a ‘small-time businesswoman’, Douglas Anderson of Gap Group said: “Her businesses
have been no more than excessively over promoted PR minnows gaining unjustified
acclaim due to the glamorous sector they happen to be in.
“There is
no way, by any measure, that she is qualified to advise anybody on setting up a
profitable business, because quite simply, she hasn’t!”.
Mone
resigned as a director of MJM in August 2015. It was wound up last year with
debts of over £300,000.
Lording it
Mone was
given a peerage by Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015, but in the following
six years spoke just five times and submitted 22 written questions.
Her
appointment was criticised by both opposition and Tory figures at the time,
with one branding her “a public relations creation, a personal brand rather
than a serious businesswoman”.
Prevailing
events tended to back that assessment. Her UTan range, launched through UBeauty
Global, was claimed by Mone to have cost £1m to develop but the company’s first
set of accounts showed it to be worth less than £25,000.
She and
partner Doug Barrowman launched a cryptocurrency in 2018 hoping to raise $80m,
with the baroness describing herself as “one of the biggest experts in
Cryptocurrency and Blockchain”. By August, The Sunday Times reported that the
project had “flopped” and all investors had been refunded.
Mone was
also accused in 2019 of sending a racist WhatsApp message describing a man of
Indian heritage as “a waste of a man’s white skin”, which she denies, with a
representative responding that the baroness and her husband had “built over 15
schools in Africa”.
The biggest
scandal of all, however, would break in October of 2020.
PPE ‘fastlane’
In October
of 2020 The Herald revealed that the British government had awarded a £122m
contract to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) to a company run by a
former associate of Baroness Mone without going out to tender.
The
justification given was that the equipment was needed urgently as cases of
Covid spiked, with the contract handed out to supply 25 million gowns for
health workers.
It was
awarded by the Department of Health and Social Care just a month after the
company, Medpro, was founded.
The gowns
were never used.
A
spokeswoman for Baroness Mone said that she had no comment as she has no role
or involvement in PPE Medpro, which received over £200m in total via government
contracts.
The
spokeswoman added: “Mr Barrowman (Mone’s husband) is also not involved in the
company… and is not a Director or Shareholder.”
It later
emerged that Mone had referred the company to the government in March 2020.
Leaked emails later suggested she had been promoting Covid tests sold by the
company as late as October 2020.
This week
leaked documents appeared to show that Mone and her children secretly received
£29m from the profits made by Medpro through a secret offshore trust of which
they were beneficiaries.
The
documents, produced by HSBC, state Barrowman was paid at least £65m by the
company and then distributed the funds through a series of offshore accounts,
trusts and companies.
The funds
landed in Barrowman’s account just before he and Mone’s wedding and honeymoon,
while The Sun reported in August 2021 that the bra tycoon’s children had spent
more than £3m on property in Glasgow during the pandemic.
Mone’s
shared home was raided in April 2022 as part of a National Crime Agency
investigation into Medpro, while a separate investigation into standards is
taking place in the House of Lords.
For Mone
you might say it’s win or bust.
Michelle Mone, Baroness Mone
Michelle
Georgina Mone, Baroness Mone, OBE (née Allan; born October 1971) is a British
businesswoman and Conservative life peer. She has set up several businesses,
including MJM International Ltd in 1996 and the lingerie company Ultimo along
with her then husband Michael Mone. Other ventures include naturopathic
'weight-loss' pills, and a fake tan product via Ultimo Beauty.
Mone became
a Conservative life peer in 2015. From 2020 to 2022, in a series of
investigative pieces, The Guardian reported that Mone and her children had
secretly received £29 million of profits to an offshore trust from government
PPE contracts, which she had lobbied for during the COVID-19 pandemic. The
House of Lords Commissioner for Standards and National Crime Agency launched
investigations into Mone's links to these contracts in January 2022. Mone
announced in December 2022 that she was taking a leave of absence from the
House of Lords "to clear her name" amid the allegations.
Early life
Born in
October 1971, Michelle Allan grew up in Glasgow's East End. She recounted how
she had lived with her family in a one-bedroomed house with no bath or shower
until she was ten. She also told of how her younger brother, who had spina
bifida, died at the age of eight, when she was ten years old, and that her
father, who was suffering from cancer, lost the use of his legs when she was
fifteen.
She left
school aged 15, with no qualifications, to pursue a modelling career. At 17 she
met her future husband, Michael Mone, and by 18 years old, she was pregnant
with her first child, Rebecca. She then converted from Protestantism to
Catholicism and married Michael, an anaesthetist's son from a Catholic family.
Business career
Mone
obtained a marketing job with the Labatt brewing company and, within two years,
had risen to become its head of marketing in Scotland. She was then made redundant by the company,
prompting her to set up her own business, and has since admitted that she had
invented qualifications on her CV to obtain the job.
MJM International
In November
1996 she founded MJM International with her then-husband Michael. In August
1999, Mone launched the Ultimo lingerie brand at Selfridges department store in
London. Mone came up with the idea for the Ultimo bra, the brand's first
product, when she was wearing an uncomfortable cleavage-enhancing bra one day
and believed she could create a more comfortable cleavage-enhancing bra.Mone
had read about a new silicone product while on holiday in Florida and
approached the company to obtain its European licence to produce bras. Mone has
claimed that an Ultimo bra was worn by Julia Roberts in the Hollywood movie,
Erin Brockovich, but this was denied by the film's creators. Ultimo went on to
include other products, such as backless dresses and shapewear, which led to
MJM International's growth.
Mone left
MJM International briefly in 2013 following the breakdown of her relationship
with her then husband. The business assets were transferred to its parent firm,
Ultimo Brands International Ltd, in a partnership with MAS Holdings.[4] MJM
International was then dissolved. In November 2014, Mone sold down her stake in
Ultimo Brands International to 20% to partner MAS Holdings.
In 2014, a
former operations director for MJM won a claim for unfair dismissal from her
company after discovering that Mone had authorised electronic bugging of his
office.
Mone
threatened to sue her critics when it was revealed her company MJM
International had paid a substantial sum of money into a controversial tax
avoidance scheme, criticised by Chancellor George Osborne as "morally
repugnant". Following a test case brought by HMRC against Rangers Football
Club, the employee benefit trust (the type of tax avoidance scheme used by MJM
International) was ruled illegal in November 2015. Mone said she had "not
done anything wrong" in relation to tax avoidance and that her ex-husband
had "dealt with all the finance". In August 2015, Mone resigned her
directorships of both MJM and Ultimo, saying she had sold 80% of the latter.
TrimSecrets and weight loss
TrimSecrets
were weight loss pills originally formulated by the naturopath Jan de Vries.
The product also consisted of diet and exercise advice.[13] In 2006 MJM formed
a joint venture with Jan de Vries, taking a 50% share in the product.[14][13]
Mone claimed that exercise and reduced caloric intake had no effect on her
weight and credited TrimSecrets pills with her weight loss. Mone also falsely
claimed the efficacy of the product had been proven in clinical trials, but
when questioned further, she explained that approximately 60 users had
completed a questionnaire but was unable to produce the results.
In October
2013, Jan de Vries sold his interest in the company with Mone having 60% of the
business and a silent business partner the remaining 40%.In August 2015 it was
reported that the company had made a loss in each of the last four years that
accounts were available.
In November
2015, Mone was criticised for using her "Baroness Mone"-styled
Twitter account to promote TrimSecrets pills, although a spokesman for Mone
said she had disposed of her ownership of the firm before her tweet. A
spokesman for the British Dietetic Association said "there is no
scientific basis or rationale for these products, they are making claims which
are unfounded and feeding into public confusion around nutrition and pseudo-science."
On the ITV
programme Loose Women in 2020, Mone said she lost weight during the COVID-19
lockdown by exercising three times a day. She stated: "When I was
overweight and in a very uncomfortable horrible marriage, my way of coping with
that was to continuously eat."
Ultimo Beauty/Ubeauty Global
In 2012
Mone's company, Ultimo Beauty, launched a fake tan product.[18][19] In 2014
when announcing that she had sold most of her stake in Ultimo, she confirmed
she had taken 100% control of Ubeauty Global, consisting of the assets of
Ultimo Beauty.
In 2016,
after she was made a peer, Mone changed the company formation so that it no
longer had to publish public trading accounts. In February 2017 accounts for
the company were published, covering the time from 2014 to 2016 and it was
revealed the company had assets of £23,000. In March 2017, Mone announced that
she had sold the company.
Aston Plaza development
In 2017,
Mone and her partner Doug Barrowman launched a £250m residential development in
Dubai which they claimed was to be the "first-ever development to be
priced in bitcoin". In April 2019, The Sunday Times reported that the
development was "on hold" with the construction incomplete, while a
spokesman for Mone said that it was going "extremely well" and was in
the process of being redesigned.
Equi cryptocurrency
In 2018,
Mone and her partner Doug Barrowman launched a cryptocurrency called Equi
through a company called Equi Capital. It aimed to raise $80m which would be
invested in startup companies. Mone described herself as "one of the
biggest experts in Cryptocurrency and Blockchain" and promoted the project
as the "bitcoin of Britain". The company recruited 1,000 people to
promote the cryptocurrency through social media, but they only raised £1,600.
According to Barrowman, £5.4m of tokens were sold in a "pre-sale
offering" but the public sale beginning in March 2018 raised only
£540,000. By August 2018, The Sunday Times reported that the project had
"flopped" and all investors had been refunded.The Financial Times
reported that it had "ended in a fiasco that exposes the total absence of
oversight in the ICO market".
Political career
Mone says
she previously supported the Labour Party, as did her family, but withdrew her
support in 2009 after the prime minister, Gordon Brown, increased the top
income tax rate to 50%, also indicating that she would leave the UK. She
further stated that Brown and his government mismanaged the country's finances
during the global economic crisis.
During the
London riots in August 2011, Mone called for the army to be brought in and
tweeted "People who riot, steal, cover face deserve zero human
rights". In January 2012, she gave an interview to The Sunday Times stating
her intention to move herself and her business to England were Scotland to
become independent following the 2014 referendum on the issue. However, despite
Scotland voting No in the referendum, Mone confirmed a few months later that
she was leaving Scotland.
On 10
August 2015, the government announced that Mone would lead a two-part review
into entrepreneurship and small businesses, particularly focusing upon setting
up small businesses in deprived areas, under the Work and Pensions Secretary,
Iain Duncan Smith. On 27 August 2015, the prime minister, David Cameron,
announced a list of new creations of life peers, including Mone. Her inclusion
drew criticism from other business leaders. Some Conservatives questioned her
suitability for the House of Lords. The Scotsman reported that senior Scottish
Conservatives also criticised Cameron's action, with an unnamed Conservative
describing Mone as "a public relations creation, a personal brand rather
than a serious businesswoman".
Mone was
criticised on Twitter when her first vote in the House of Lords was to vote
against a motion to delay government cuts to tax credits of around £1,300 a
year for three million low-income families. Mone responded to the controversy
by tweeting that people should "work hard" and not "look for
excuses" for their own poverty.[39] In October 2016 she said that she was
wrong to support the cuts and she regretted the way she voted.
Attendance in House of Lords
In her
maiden speech in the House of Lords, Mone stated: "I look forward to
playing a full and active role in your lordships’ house". The Times
reported in 2018 that in the previous year, Mone had only attended the House of
Lords on 12 % of the days in which it was sitting, missing important debates
including on the Brexit bill. Her low attendance led SNP MSP Rona Mackay to
describe her as the "Layabout Lady of Mayfair" and businessman
Douglas Anderson, who had criticised her original appointment, called for her
to resign.By early 2022, Mone had made only five speeches in the House of Lords
and asked 22 written questions. As of December 2022, she had not spoken in a
debate since March 2020 and had last voted in April 2022.
PPE Medpro controversy
Further
information: Controversies regarding COVID-19 contracts in the United Kingdom
In October
2020 it was revealed that PPE Medpro, a company led by Anthony Page, a business
associate of Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman, had been awarded a contract
for £122 million to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) to the NHS
during the COVID-19 pandemic.[44] Page resigned as secretary for MGM Media, the
company that manages and receives payment for Mone's branding and media
engagements and on the same day he formed Medpro. In October 2020, a
spokeswoman for Mone stated she "has no role or involvement in PPE
Medpro", adding: "Mr Barrowman is also not involved in the company
PPE Medpro and is not a Director or Shareholder.”
It later
emerged that a second contract for £80 million was awarded to Medpro even
earlier when the company was just 4 weeks old.
In November
2021, a Freedom of Information request revealed that Mone personally
recommended the company to the government through its VIP fast-track lane for
firms with political connections and that the company was awarded £200 million
in government contracts. This high-priority process was set up in the early
stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to bypass the normal competitive
tender process for procurement that was considered urgent. It further emerged
in January 2022 that Mone recommended Medpro for a government contract five
days before the company had been formed. At the time, Mone's lawyers stated
that she "was not connected to PPE Medpro in any capacity" but
documents leaked to The Guardian revealed that a director of the company was a
long term employee of Mone's husband's company. WhatsApp messages seen by The
Guardian appeared to show Mone discussing the size of garments that formed part
of a contract. Lawyers for Mone and her husband denied the allegations.
Following a
complaint by the Labour peer George Foulkes, the House of Lords commissioner
for standards launched an investigation into the relationship between Mone and
Medpro in January 2022.[50] On 27 April 2022, Mone's homes in London and on the
Isle of Man and associated business addresses were raided by the police, who
have launched an investigation into potential fraud.
The
National Crime Agency is pursuing a tandem investigation into PPE Medpro.
In November
2022, The Guardian reported that Mone had received £29 million in payments from
PPE Medpro to a secret offshore HSBC trust fund, of which she and her adult
children were the beneficiaries. Her lawyer had previously said she did not
declare PPE Medpro in the House of Lords register of financial interests as
"she did not benefit financially and was not connected to PPE Medpro in
any capacity."
Mone also
lobbied for LGI Diagnostics, a company established as a secret entity of her
husband Barrowman's family office, Knox family office.[54] A unnamed source
told The Guardian that Mone was "in a class of her own in terms of the
sheer aggression of her advocacy" for LGI Diagnostics. On 6 December 2022,
Mone's spokesperson said she was taking a leave of absence from the House of
Lords with immediate effect "in order to clear her name of the allegations
that have been unjustly levelled against her."
Awards and recognition
On 21
November 2002, Paisley University awarded her an honorary doctorate.[55] Mone
was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her
"services to the lingerie industry" in the 2010 New Year Honours.
After
consultation with the College of Arms, on 30 September 2015, she was created a
life peer as Baroness Mone, of Mayfair in the City of Westminster.[59] She was
introduced in the House of Lords on 15 October by fellow Conservative peers
Lord Freud and Baroness Morris of Bolton.
Personal life
Mone has
appeared on a number of TV programmes, including The Apprentice and 71 Degrees
North.
On 26
December 2018 Mone announced her engagement to Scottish businessman Douglas
Barrowman. They were married on 29 November 2020.
In December
2021, a wealth manager of Indian heritage accused Mone of sending racist text
messages to him after the two were involved in a 2019 yachting incident in
Monaco, which resulted in the death of a person. He said that Mone called him
"a waste of a man's white skin" via text. A spokesperson for Mone
said she was not a racist and "Baroness Mone and her husband have built
over 15 schools in Africa in the past three years"; this was followed by a
message from her lawyers, who said that Mone could not access her messages and
had no "detailed memory of them".
Mone's
spokesperson said it was "illogical she would have made such a comment or
made it with the slightest racist intent as, at the time, she had no knowledge
that the complainant was anything other than white British, as his appearance
is 100% white, with a cut-glass English accent."
The
allegations of racism were referred to the House of Lords Commissioner for
Standards, but commissioners did not investigate the matter as Mone's comments
were said in a personal capacity and not in her capacity as a member of the
House of Lords.[63] In January 2022, the Metropolitan Police announced they
were investigating the incident after receipt of an allegation of a racially
aggravated malicious communication.
The yacht, the wedding and £29m: Michelle Mone’s
life during the Covid crisis
After recommending PPE Medpro for £203m government
contracts, the Tory peer spoke of how business was hard but ‘rewarding’
David Conn
David Conn
Wed 23 Nov
2022 18.08 GMT
In the
summer of 2021, when a traumatised Britain was enduring a third wave of Covid
infections as it struggled to emerge from the pandemic, the Conservative peer
Michelle Mone posted a photograph on Instagram of herself and her husband,
Douglas Barrowman, in the Mediterranean. They were on their new luxury yacht,
Lady M.
Mone, 51,
who attained celebrity status through her bra and lingerie company, Ultimo, and
was appointed to the House of Lords by David Cameron in 2015, told her
followers: “Today I’m feeling reflective. I feel so grateful to be where I am,
in a beautiful part of the world with the people I love the most. It wasn’t
easy. There were some real challenges, both emotionally and physically.
“Business isn’t easy. But it is rewarding.”
The social
media update about the sun-soaked luxury that “Lady (Michelle) Mone OBE”, as
she describes herself on her social feeds, was enjoying on deck prompted an
obvious question: during a global health and economic crisis, what business had
she and Barrowman found that was so rewarding?
There had
been speculation some months earlier that the couple’s good fortune may have
had some connection to two large PPE contracts that the government awarded to a
newly formed company, PPE Medpro, during Covid’s first deadly wave. The
contracts were awarded via the “VIP lane” for companies recommended by
Conservative MPs and peers and other politically connected people, but the
government did not disclose at that time that PPE Medpro’s “VIP” had been Mone.
On paper,
PPE Medpro had apparent links with Mone: the company’s directors, Anthony Page
and Voirrey Coole, worked for Barrowman’s Isle of Man Knox Group, and Page had
been the registered secretary of Mone’s company MGM Media, which managed her
brand.
Asked in
late autumn 2020, after these contracts had been awarded, if they were involved
with PPE Medpro, Mone and Barrowman had emphatically denied having anything to
do with it.
To
emphasise the point, Page also issued a press release stating: “PPE Medpro was
not awarded the contract due to company or personal connections to the
government or Conservative party.”
Through the
two years of scrutiny that have followed, the manner of Mone and Barrowman’s
responses, almost all issued by lawyers acting on their behalf, has been striking:
a series of fierce denials of “involvement” in the company, or the process
through which it secured its government contracts, coupled with legal threats.
However the
Guardian has chipped away at the edifice of the denials. A two-year
investigation establishing the couple’s links to PPE Medpro culminates today
with newly leaked documents indicating that Mone and Barrowman secretly
received tens of millions of pounds originating from the company’s profits,
which were sent to the Isle of Man.
The
documents state that Barrowman received at least £65m in PPE Medpro profits,
and transferred £29m to an offshore trust that, bank records indicate,
benefited his wife and her adult children.
Contacted
about the new disclosures, a lawyer for Mone said: “There are a number of
reasons why our client cannot comment on these issues and she is under no duty
to do so.” A lawyer who represents both Barrowman and PPE Medpro said that an
ongoing investigation limited what they were able to say on these matters. He
added: “For the time being we are also instructed to say that there is much
inaccuracy in the portrayal of the alleged ‘facts’ and a number of them are
completely wrong.”
A high-profile wedding and an ugly spat
In the
autumn of 2020, months after PPE Medpro had secured the £203m Covid contracts,
Mone was tussling with other considerations, including how to hold a wedding in
the pandemic. In September 2020 she was forced to cancel a planned ceremony in
the 13th-century chapel of St Mary Undercroft, in the Palace of Westminster.
Instead,
she switched to the the Isle of Man, where there were few Covid restrictions at
the time. Barrowman, her then fiance, has a sprawling U-shaped nine-bedroom
home on the island. While the couple were making wedding arrangements from this
base, Barrowman seems to have also been focusing on moving profits gained from
PPE Medpro around various Isle of Man registered trusts, companies and
accounts.
None of
this was known then, despite the attention on Mone. Particularly since
receiving a peerage in 2015, Mone had become a fixture in the tabloids, which
titled her “Baroness Bra”. The wedding in November 2020 provided a level of
glamour that was gleefully splashed across pages of papers mostly still
concerned with the pandemic. Hello! magazine filled its pages with pictures of
the couple’s celebrations, including shots of the bride in her designer wedding
dress and Jimmy Choo heels.
After the
wedding, Mone took to Instagram to thank “everyone on the Isle of Man for
making our day so special”, including an opera singer and five live bands that
had played during the weekend.
In December
2020, with the UK still in tier 2 and 3 Covid restrictions, Mone received a
mixed public reaction to idyllic photos she posted online of the honeymoon at a
five-star resort in the Maldives where, she tweeted, the couple were having
“the most fantastic time”.
Just a
month later, the Guardian understands, the bank Barrowman used in the Isle of
Man, HSBC, was conducting an investigation into the financier’s receipt and
distribution of the millions from PPE Medpro’s profits, and – the Guardian
understands – decided to drop the couple as customers. HSBC declined to
comment.
Publicly,
however, all was blissful through the summer of 2021. Mone posted a series of
perfectly posed pictures, including ones on the deck of the Lady M, with
reflections on her state of contentment. “Decide what makes you happy and just
go for it,” she wrote on one.
In June
2021, Mone and Barrowman garnered widespread publicity for a newly announced
£18m business venture in Aberdeen, neospace, which provided office space
tailored for post-Covid hybrid working. In August, almost a year after the
couple are now known to have received a fortune in PPE Medpro profits, the
Scottish Sun reported that Mone’s adult children had altogether spent more than
£3m buying new properties in Glasgow.
Just weeks
after her 50th birthday, however, the cracks started to appear in Mone and
Barrowman’s carefully cultivated public image.
An ugly
spat a couple of years previously with a former friend of Indian heritage was
revealed by the Guardian. Mone was accused of sending him an allegedly racist
message, calling him “a waste of a man’s white skin”, after a yacht crash off
Monaco. Mone was interviewed under caution earlier this year, although in
August the Metropolitan police confirmed that no further action would be taken.
Links to PPE Medpro revealed
The mystery
around PPE Medpro was about to be broken too. For nearly 18 months the couple
had constantly dismissed, denied or played down any links to the company.
However the
Good Law Project, a not-for-profit campaign group, pursued a freedom of
information request that led to the information commissioner ordering the
government to publish the names of both the companies that had received
contracts through the VIP lane and those who had referred them. When it did so,
PPE Medpro was on the list, with the name of the VIP who initially referred the
company to the government: “Baroness Mone”.
Confronted
in November 2021 with the one inescapable fact at that time – that she had
recommended the company to her fellow Tory peer Theodore Agnew, then a minister
responsible for procurement – Mone’s lawyer said: “Having taken the very
simple, solitary and brief step of referring PPE Medpro as a potential supplier
to the office of Lord Agnew, our client did not do anything further in respect
of PPE Medpro.”
The lawyer
also stated that Mone had not declared the company on her Lords register of
interests because “she did not benefit financially and was not connected to PPE
Medpro in any capacity”.
The details
of how Mone and Barrowman were linked to the company came instead from key
information and documents provided by sources to the Guardian after Mone’s
referral of the company became public.
In early
January 2022, the Guardian revealed further details about Mone’s links to the
PPE Medpro contracts. Leaked files appeared to show that, despite their
constant denials, Mone and Barrowman did appear to have been secretly involved
in the company. By then it had also emerged that the gowns supplied under a
£122m contract had been rejected after a technical inspection and never used.
A day after
the Guardian’s report, seemingly unconcerned by the revelations, Mone told her Twitter
followers that she loved putting on make-up even when she had no event to
attend. But it was the last time she shared her thoughts with her followers. On
Instagram, too, her feed soon went quiet.
Then, in
March 2022, the Guardian revealed new details of how Mone’s efforts had helped
PPE Medpro secure its place in the VIP lane back in May 2020.
Her first
approach to the government was to her fellow Conservative Michael Gove, who was
then a Cabinet Office minister. Neither party has responded to questions about
the nature of their relationship and how Gove came to be Mone’s first point of
contact when offering to supply PPE to the government. She did tweet
approvingly about him in 2017, writing: “Brilliant night with my colleagues at
@UKHouseofLords Spent some time with @michaelgove I can honestly say,he’s mega
switched on&a nice guy.”
Brilliant night with my colleagues at @UKHouseofLords
Spent some time with @michaelgove I can honestly say,he's mega switched
on&a nice guy
— Lady (Michelle) Mone OBE (@MichelleMone) June 13,
2017
After her
approach to Gove in the weeks after the UK’s first lockdown, Mone contacted
Agnew by private email on 8 May 2020, copying in Gove. She offered to supply
large quantities of PPE face masks, the Guardian revealed, saying they could be
sourced through “my team in Hong Kong”.
Agnew
passed the offer to civil servants handling “priority” offers from politically
connected people. PPE Medpro, the company, was not even incorporated until four
days later, on 12 May 2020, but by the end of June, the government had
contracted to pay it £203m of public money.
A few weeks
after these latest revelations, in late April 2022, Mone made a rare appearance
in the House of Lords to vote on the government’s police, crime, sentencing and
courts bill. The following day police cars turned up at her London and Isle of
Man properties. The raids by the National Crime Agency (NCA), investigating
potential fraud relating to PPE Medpro, were reported widely. Mone has not
voted in the Lords since.
The latest
batch of documents reviewed by the Guardian state that in October 2020,
Barrowman transferred £29m originating from PPE Medpro profits to a trust set
up on the Isle of Man. Records indicate the trust was set up to benefit Mone
and her three children, and that its bank account was opened the same month
that she recommended PPE Medpro to Tory ministers.
Barrowman
is understood to have told HSBC that his wife had “no involvement” in the
business activities of PPE Medpro, and the onward transfer of its profits via
his personal bank account had been made “in his personal capacity”.
These
details will add significant pressure on the peer, who is facing an
investigation by the Lords commissioner for standards into whether she breached
the conduct rules by failing to register an interest in the company, and by
lobbying for it to be awarded government contracts. That investigation
continues. Mone has denied wrongdoing.
The NCA’s
investigation into potential fraud by PPE Medpro also continues. So far no one
has been arrested or charged. Lawyers for PPE Medpro have declined to comment.
Barrowman
declined to answer questions about whether money originating from PPE Medpro
profits was used to pay for the Lady M yacht, the new Glasgow properties, the
wedding or the honeymoon. A lawyer for Mone and her children said: “We are
advised there is no truth in what appears to be entirely speculative ‘guesses’
on your part.”
A year ago
Mone’s lawyer responded to a question about whether money derived from PPE
Medpro’s deal had funded the yacht. “The inference which you clearly wish to
create is that our client has used her position to lobby the government to
award lucrative contracts to companies ‘connected’ to her and then spent the
proceeds on an expensive yacht … That is not only wholly untrue, but if
repeated, is highly actionable as it is grossly defamatory of our client.”
Meanwhile,
the UK government is continuing its attempt to recover money from PPE Medpro in
relation to the unused gowns through a dispute resolution process. PPE Medpro
insists the gowns purchased through the £122m contract passed inspection, and
that the company – and, presumably, the beneficiaries of its profits – are
entitled to keep the money.
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