Former Tory peer Michelle Mone facing criminal bribery
allegation
Mone and husband, Douglas Barrowman, under
investigation by NCA over involvement with PPE Medpro
David Conn
and Vikram Dodd
Tue 12 Dec
2023 11.40 EST
The former
Conservative peer Michelle Mone is facing a criminal allegation of bribery as
part of a long-running investigation by the National Crime Agency into her
involvement with a company that secured multimillion-pound government PPE
contracts from the government.
In a film
paid for by the company, PPE Medpro, the producer and presenter, Mark
Williams-Thomas, states that three criminal allegations are being made against
Mone and her husband, Douglas Barrowman, as part of the NCA investigation.
“The NCA
investigation into them both is in relation to allegations of conspiracy to
defraud, fraud by false representation, and bribery, which they both
categorically deny,” Williams-Thomas states. He says that he has been given
“complete access” to the couple’s “criminal case files”.
Mone and
Barrowman, a tax planning and wealth advisory businessman based in the Isle of
Man, have both been interviewed under caution by the NCA, documents shown in
the film appear to suggest.
The
documents, which are heavily cropped in the film released on YouTube on Sunday,
include what appear to be prepared statements by Mone and Barrowman for the NCA
interviews.
One
document refers to the bribery allegation against Mone, although the sentence
is only partly visible. It references her position in the House of Lords and
includes the phrase “reward for the improper performance”.
Mone made
the first approach to ministers Michael Gove and Theodore Agnew on behalf of
PPE Medpro in May 2020, offering to supply PPE through “my team in Hong Kong”.
Within weeks, the government awarded the newly formed company two contracts
worth a total of £203m.
For years,
Mone and Barrowman emphatically denied their involvement in PPE Medpro in
statements issued by their lawyers. However, last month the Guardian revealed
that the couple had for the first time publicly accepted their involvement in
the company.
In April
2022 the NCA executed search warrants at PPE Medpro’s offices and the homes in
London and the Isle of Man shared by Mone and Barrowman.
In November
2022, the Guardian reported that leaked documents produced by HSBC bank
indicated that Barrowman was an investor in PPE Medpro, and that he was paid at
least £65m from its profits. The documents indicated that Barrowman then
transferred £29m to an offshore trust, of which Mone and her three adult
children were the beneficiaries.
Two weeks
later, Mone took leave of absence from the House of Lords. Her spokesperson
said she was doing that “in order to clear her name of the allegations that
have been unjustly levelled against her”.
The prime
minister Rishi Sunak’s press secretary said that the leave of absence meant
that Mone, who was made a Conservative peer by David Cameron in 2015, had lost
the Tory whip “by default”, although she remains a member of the House of
Lords.
In the PPE
Medpro-backed film, Williams-Thomas asked Mone whether she had “benefited in
any way from PPE Medpro money either directly or indirectly”.
She
replied: “Look, my husband’s an entrepreneur. There were many entrepreneurs
involved in PPE, supplying PPE, and the consortium that he led supplied huge
volumes at very competitive prices that saved the NHS tens of millions of
pounds. What my husband decides to do after the event and who benefits from
that is at his discretion. I am his wife and I may indirectly benefit, but
that’s just like all other families around that are married. That’s just it,
that is not my money; I don’t have that money, it’s not my money.”
Williams-Thomas
also asked Mone whether she had “lied to the press” because she said she had
had no involvement in PPE Medpro, which was “not true”.
She
replied: “I made an error in what I said to the press. I regret not saying to
the press straight away: ‘Yes I am involved, and the government knew I was
involved, and the emergency team, Cabinet team, knew I was involved, the
government, [Department of Health and Social Care] knew that I was involved,
the NHS, all of them knew I was involved.’ The legal team advised myself and my
husband not to comment and not to say that of my involvement in PPE Medpro.”
The
Guardian contacted a spokesperson for PPE Medpro, who last month said they were
authorised to speak on behalf of Mone and Barrowman, with numerous questions
about the NCA investigation. In response, a spokesperson for the company said:
“Any questions that you have are fully addressed in the documentary.”
Williams-Thomas
said: “I was commission[ed] by PPE Medpro to undertake an investigation and
produce and present a programme, and as such would be given access to both the
civil and criminal cases, and to Baroness Mone and Doug Barrowman. Full
editorial control sat with the production team and no editorial changes were
made by either Mone or Barrowman.”
The NCA,
which investigates serious and organised crime, said in a statement that it had
“opened an investigation in May 2021 into suspected criminal offences committed
in the procurement of PPE contracts by PPE Medpro”. A spokesperson said
the investigation was ongoing.
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