Michelle Mone hit by court order on £75mn of assets in NCA fraud probe

About £75mn of assets linked to Conservative peer Michelle Mone and her husband have been frozen or restrained by court order as the pair face a National Crime Agency investigation into alleged PPE fraud.

The court order seen by the Financial Times covers assets including a six-bedroom Belgravia townhouse, a country estate on the Isle of Man, and 15 accounts at Coutts, C Hoare & Co and Goldman Sachs International. 

The December restraint order blocks Mone and her Isle of Man-based financier husband, Douglas Barrowman, from selling some of the assets and places restrictions on others.

The order was consented to by Mone and Barrowman and followed an application by the Crown Prosecution Service under the Proceeds of Crime Act. The CPS acts in court on cases investigated by other agencies.

Mone, a lingerie entrepreneur whom Lord David Cameron made a Conservative peer in 2015, has been at the centre of a scandal relating to the sale of allegedly faulty personal protective equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The NCA in May 2021 opened an investigation into “suspected criminal offences” committed in the procurement of PPE contracts by PPE Medpro, owned by a consortium led by Barrowman.

Mone last December told The Sunday Times she was being “treated like Pablo Escobar”, the late Colombian cocaine kingpin, after having her bank accounts frozen.

PPE Medpro was awarded government contracts worth more than £200mn within weeks of its incorporation in May 2020.

The contracts came after PPE Medpro was placed in the VIP “high-priority lane”, under which government officials and politicians recommended groups to supply goods during the early stages of the pandemic, following a recommendation from Mone.

The NCA is investigating Mone and Barrowman in relation to “allegations of conspiracy to defraud, fraud by false representation, and bribery, which they both categorically deny”, according to a recent documentary funded by PPE Medpro.

The UK government sued PPE…