On the sunny spring afternoon of May 7, 2020, in the first deadly wave of the Covid pandemic, Tory colleague Michelle Mone and her husband, Douglas Barrowman, filmed themselves for Instagram. Standing between the stone pillars at the front door of their Isle of Man mansion, they applauded NHS staff, carers and other key workers, as they did weekly from different parts of their Ballakew estate.
“As always, Doug and I would like to say a massive thank you tonight to everyone who keeps the country going,” Lady Mone posted. “We appreciate each and every one of you.”
Two years later, National Crime Agency (NCA) officers were investigating PPE Medpro, a company that received more than £200m of government Covid contracts weeks after Mone referred it to ministers.
Ballakew Estate, a nine-bedroom property set in 154 acres of manicured grounds, with a spa, tennis court and helipad, was one of several sites targeted on April 27 this year as part of the NCA’s investigation into possible fraud by PPE Medpro.
The Ballakew estate. Photograph: Chrystals Estate Agents
Lawyers for PPE Medpro have declined to comment on the NCA’s investigation, which is ongoing. However, this week the company found itself at the center of a political storm.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he was “absolutely shocked” by a bombshell report published by The Guardian two weeks ago which revealed Mone and her husband secretly received tens of millions of pounds from PPE Medpro profits, according to bank documents.
MPs voted to force the Sunak government to release documents related to PPE Medpro, which Mone had helped secure a place in a “VIP” lane the government used to prioritize politically connected suppliers at the start of the pandemic
Meanwhile, The Guardian revealed that Mone had been “aggressively” lobbying ministers on behalf of a second company, LFI Diagnostics, which was another secret entity of her husband’s family office in the Isle of Man.
Now The Guardian can reveal previously unreported details about the PPE deal at the heart of the Mone controversy and the huge profits it appears to have generated, largely from supplies that have been rejected by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). . ) in a conflict with the company.
According to a Guardian analysis, Mone, Barrowman, PPE Medpro and three other intermediate companies in the supply chain appear to have made more than £100m in profits from government contracts worth £203m.
It is a trade chain that stretches from the Isle of Man to Cyprus, Hong Kong and then China, and which apparently resulted in immense fortunes being moved overseas.
Monbeg Genius on track to win at Newcastle this week. Photograph: John Grossick/Grossick Racing Photography
The series of revelations appears to have taken its toll on Mone, who this week announced he was taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords with immediate effect, according to his spokesman, “in order to clear his name from the allegations that have been poured out unjustly against her”.
The only good news for the mate this week seems to have come in the 1.17pm race at Newcastle on Thursday, won by Monbeg Genius, a horse she bought her husband as a ‘second wedding present’.
The six-year-old gelding, bought for £80,000, was one of a number of acquisitions Mone and her husband made in the months after secretly receiving at least £65m in profits from PPE Medpro. In a turnaround, several of these assets are now up for sale.
In March 2020, as the horror of the pandemic was setting in and the government began frantically trying to replenish PPE stocks that had been allowed to dwindle dangerously, the normal requirements that the public contracts had to be tendered competitively.
The DHSC would end up investing £12 billion in PPE, much of which it acquired through the “VIP” lane, which prioritized contracts for companies recommended by MPs, peers and other politically connected people.
It was the day after Mone and Barrowman were filmed applauding the NHS, on 8 May 2020, that Mone wrote an email to fellow Tory Theodore Agnew, then the procurement minister, copying Michael Gove, who moment Cabinet Minister For both, he used his private email addresses.
Michelle Mone and Doug Barrowman clapping for caregivers in an Instagram video posted on May 7, 2020. Photo: Instagram / michellemone
Mone, who was appointed to the House of Lords by David Cameron in 2015, explained that she could supply PPE “through my team in Hong Kong”. Gove appears to have already been contacted about this offer.
At that stage, PPE Medpro had not even been incorporated as a company in the UK. But Lord Agnew’s officials added Mone’s offer to the “VIP” lane. Within weeks, the government had awarded PPE Medpro two major contracts. In the first, the DHSC committed £80.85 million for the supply of 210 million face masks. The second involved paying £122 million for 25 million sterile surgical gowns.
At the time, there were some hints that PPE Medpro was linked to Mone and her husband. The company’s directors, Anthony Page and Voirrey Coole, work in senior roles at Barrowman’s Knox Group, a collection of financial services companies based in the Isle of Man. Page also had a connection to Mone, as the registered secretary of her personal branding company, MGM Media. Interestingly, he resigned from this position on the same day that PPE Medpro was incorporated, on May 12, 2020.
Page worked for the Knox House Trust, which has two divisions. One offers offshore wealth management services to high net worth clients. The second, which was run by Page, is the Barrowman Family Office, also known as the Knox Family Office, which oversees the financial affairs of him and his family.
It emerged this week that Page is the person who prepared a key document seen by the Guardian which lists PPE Medpro and LFI Diagnostics as “entities” in the Barrowman family office.
However, in 2020 the links between PPE Medpro, Mone and Barrowman were not fully known. And they were denied, dismissed or downplayed by the lawyers representing all three parties. Asked about PPE Medpro, lawyers for Mone and Barrowman insisted the pair were not involved and had “no role or function in PPE Medpro, or in the process by which contracts were awarded to PPE Medpro”.
Using the language of aggressive legal threats, Mone’s lawyers have repeatedly denied that she was “in any way connected” to the business. One said in December 2020 that “any suggestion of association” between Mone and PPE Medpro would be inaccurate, misleading and defamatory.
That same month, Page, in his capacity as director of PPE Medpro, gave a fuller account of the mysterious company, denying that it had been awarded contracts because of links to the government or the Conservative party.
He said the “group behind” PPE Medpro had set up the new UK-registered company “solely to supply the NHS and to pay UK tax”.
In a press release, Page added that PPE Medpro formed “a consortium of successful entrepreneurs” who had “more than 40 years of combined experience in the supply and delivery of medical supplies.” The UK government had “requested assistance” from this group, he added, to protect the country from “counterfeit or unreliable products” and to prevent “highly inflated prices by numerous opportunistic operators”.
A person with detailed knowledge of the PPE Medpro operation told the Guardian more than a year ago that Page’s press release was misleading. They said: “To the best of my knowledge of the people involved in the supply chain of Medpro’s PPE contracts with the DHSC, they had no experience with PPE prior to the pandemic.”
Doug Barrowman and Michelle Mone in Cheltenham in March 2019. Photograph: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images
Another well-placed source came forward at the same time to dispute Mone and Barrowman’s repeated denials of links to PPE Medpro. They weren’t the type of person who would normally talk to a reporter. But they became increasingly uncomfortable reading the claims made by the lawyers representing the couple. To remain silent, they said, was “morally unsustainable.”
However, the source warned that establishing a link between the conservative father and PPE Medpro would prove exceptionally difficult given the family’s financial affairs were shrouded in offshore secrecy.
On the same day that PPE Medpro was incorporated in the UK, a company of the same name was registered in the Isle of Man, an offshore financial center where the ownership of companies can be kept secret and no tax is charged corporation tax on profits.
While the UK’s “PPE Medpro” secured the contracts with the government, its Isle of Man sister company signed deals with a London-based firm, Loudwater Trade and Finance, according to documents seen by the Guardian on last year.
In one of the deals, PPE Medpro claimed the company’s role in the deal was to “use its extensive network” to seek contracts with the NHS and “other government bodies in the British Isles”. He did not specify who exactly at the company had “an extensive network” that could help secure government contracts, but Mone is the only publicly known figure who lobbied for the company.
According to the agreement, Loudwater committed to “manage and secure the supply chain of key PPE items from China and overseas.” A family-owned importing company, Loudwater is primarily run by one of its directors, Maurice Stimler. In its annual report for the year to 30 September 2020, the period covering its arrangements with PPE Medpro, it stated that its “core” business activity “remained … the international coffee trade , consumables, edible nuts and…