TORY peer Michelle Mone is to be questioned by police over a claim that she sent a racist text message.
The Sun reports that the 50-year-old millionaire has been asked by the Met Police to attend a station to be interviewed under caution after a formal complaint was made.
The bra tycoon allegedly told a man of Indian heritage he was a “waste of a white man’s skin” in a WhatsApp message during a dispute in 2019.
The tabloid reports that Mone described the man’s partner as a “nut case bird” and “mental loony”.
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Mone was appointed to the Lords by Tory PM David Cameron in 2015, she sold off her underwear empire Ultimo in the same year.
The Met involvement comes after parliamentary officials said the claims, made in a formal complaint, fell outside of their jurisdiction.
Mone was reportedly due to meet officers in central London for a formal, taped interview but pulled out at the last minute, and the meeting had to be rescheduled.
A Met spokesman said: “In June, police received an allegation of a racially aggravated malicious communication in relation to information posted on a messaging app.
Mone founded underwear firm Ultimo before being appointed a peer by David Cameron
“Police spoke to the complainant and advised that for the investigation to progress a statement would need to be taken; for this to be admissible in any future court proceedings, this would need to be done in person.
“In October, the complainant gave a statement to police and the investigation continues.
“A 50-year-old woman has been invited to attend for an interview under caution at a future date.”
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A complaint was first made to the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards in December last year, but officials said they could not investigate as the exchange wasn’t part of Mone’s parliamentary duties.
A statement from Mone’s representative said: “Baroness Mone is 100 per cent not a racist. Baroness Mone and her husband have built over 15 schools in Africa in the past three years.”
Her lawyers later said Mone (above) has “no access” to the messages and no “detailed memory of them”.
They added: “She is not prepared to comment on the messages unless and until their authenticity has been confirmed.
“But Baroness Mone, in any event, very strongly denies that she is a racist, a sexist or that she has a lack of respect for those persons genuinely suffering with mental health difficulties.”
The news comes as leaked files reported by The Guardian suggested that Mone had close and secret ties to a PPE firm which she recommended for government contracts through the Tories' "VIP lane".
PPE Medpro was awarded more than £200m in government contracts after Mone referred it to the Cabinet Office.
The Baroness and her husband Douglas Barrowman claimed they had no “association” with the firm and “never had any role or function in PPE Medpro, nor in the process by which contracts were awarded” to the company.
However, The Guardian reported that documents suggested the pair "may have played a central role in the business deal that enabled PPE Medpro to sell millions of masks and surgical gowns to the government".
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