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.
