The former Conservative peer Michelle Mone and her husband, Doug Barrowman, have acknowledged for the first time that he made multimillion-pound profits from two PPE deals during the Covid pandemic. Here is the background to the story.
Who are Michelle Mone and Doug Barrowman?
Mone, 52, became well known particularly in her native Scotland for the bra and lingerie company Ultimo, which she built up with her first husband, Michael Mone. David Cameron appointed her as a Conservative member of the House of Lords in 2015.
Doug Barrowman, 58, runs the Knox Group, a financial services firm in the Isle of Man, a tax haven, that specialises in tax planning and wealth management.
The couple were married on the Isle of Man in November 2020, having been forced by Covid pandemic restrictions to cancel their planned wedding in Westminster’s ancient parliamentary chapel St Mary Undercroft.
What PPE deals were the couple involved in?
The Department of Health and Social Care granted a newly formed company, PPE Medpro Ltd, two contracts worth a total of £203m in May and June 2020. The first, for £80.85m, was to supply 210m face masks, and the second was to supply 25m sterile surgical gowns, for which the government paid £122m.
The contracts were processed via the “VIP lane”, which gave high priority and fast-tracked PPE offers from companies introduced by people with connections to the government.
What have the couple said previously about their involvement?
PPE Medpro had clear links to Barrowman’s Knox group, but after the contracts were published in the autumn of 2020, and in response to questions from the Guardian, Mone and Barrowman fiercely denied being involved.
Deploying the language of aggressive legal threats, three separate firms of lawyers acting variously for Mone, Barrowman and the company repeatedly denied that she was “connected in any way” to the business. One lawyer said in December 2020 that “any suggestion of an association” between Mone and PPE Medpro would be “inaccurate”, “misleading” and “defamatory”.
Another said in February 2022: “You have now been placed on notice on numerous occasions of our client’s position in relation to PPE Medpro. She has no involvement in the business.”
What are they saying now about their involvement and those denials?
Mone and Barrowman are now acknowledging publicly that they were involved in the company. Mone is repeatedly emphasising that she was substantially involved.
In November, the Guardian revealed that a representative of the couple had acknowledged for the first time that they were involved, but he declined to explain why they had denied it for years. This week, in their first broadcast interviews, they acknowledged they were involved.
In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday, Mone admitted she had lied to the press. She said she regretted it but had done it to protect her family from press attention, not to “pull the wool over anyone’s eyes”. She added: “That’s not a crime, Laura. Saying to the press ‘I’m not involved’, to protect my family, can I just make this clear, it’s not a crime.”
How much did the couple profit from the PPE deals?
In November 2022, the Guardian reported that leaked documents produced by HSBC indicated that Barrowman was paid at least £65m from PPE Medpro’s profits. The documents indicated that Barrowman then transferred £29m to an offshore trust, the Keristal Trust, of which Mone and her three adult children were the beneficiaries.
In the interview with Kuenssberg, Barrowman said the company made “a return on its investment of about, realistically, about 30%,” which is approximately £61m. He and Mone acknowledged that money was then transferred to the Keristal Trust, of which she and her children were beneficiaries. They said Barrowman’s children were beneficiaries too; it is not clear when they were added as beneficiaries.
What allegations is the National Crime Agency Investigating?
The NCA, which investigates serious and organised crime, says that since May 2021 it has been investigating “suspected criminal offences committed in the procurement of PPE contracts by PPE Medpro”.
In a film uploaded to YouTube on Sunday 10 December, paid for by PPE Medpro and featuring the first broadcast interviews with Mone and Barrowman, the film’s presenter, Mark Williams-Thomas, said they were facing allegations of conspiracy to defraud, fraud by false representation, and bribery. They deny wrongdoing.
Why is the government also suing the company?
The DHSC is suing PPE Medpro for the return of the £122m it paid for the gowns under the second contract, plus storage and other costs. The gowns were rejected after inspection when they arrived in the UK, and the government alleges they were unsafe for healthcare workers in the NHS to use.
Barrowman and the company are defending the case, arguing that the gowns were fit for purpose and passed inspections before they were shipped from China where they were manufactured.
