A £10 million property portfolio located in a Scottish neighbourhood is among assets linked to Michelle Mone and her husband that have been frozen by anti-corruption investigators.
Nine townhouses and flats in Glasgow’s Park Circus were purchased after a company led by Douglas Barrowman was handed £203m in Government PPE contracts during the pandemic.
The previous decision to block the sale of the properties, acquired through three Isle of Man-based firms, suggests investigators at the National Crime Agency (NCA) could be zeroing-in on assets they suspect were bought with the profits of the deal, The Sunday Times reports.
Mone lobbied ministers to award lucrative contracts to PPE Medpro in May 2020 but failed to declare any interest in the company to the House of Lords and her lawyers denied for years that she stood to benefit.
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The NCA is now investigating both Mone (below) and her husband Barrowman, 58, over allegations of fraud and bribery, which they both deny.
A court order obtained by The Sunday Times previously revealed that assets linked to the couple worth about £75m were frozen or restrained on December 18 following a request by investigators under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
The document, issued by a judge at Southwark Crown Court in central London, also identifies Mone’s three children from her previous marriage – Rebecca, 31, Declan, 27, and Bethany, 23, and her parents, Isobel Allan, 75, and Duncan Allan, 74, as having been parties to an earlier asset freeze.
Mone has previously said she felt she was being treated like the late Colombian cocaine baron Pablo Escobar after it emerged she had accounts under her name frozen.
Other assets covered by the court order include ten “private wealth management accounts” at Goldman Sachs International.
They are linked to two offshore trusts – the Cronk Trust and the Keristal Trust – which are believed to have come under scrutiny from the NCA.
A leaked HSBC report obtained by The Guardian and Financial Times in 2022 claimed Barrowman transferred £29m of profits from PPE Medpro into the Keristal Trust, of which Mone and her children are beneficiaries.
The purpose of the Cronk Trust and its beneficiaries remains unclear.
The court order suggests both trusts were set up via companies in the British Virgin Islands in September 2020 – around three months after PPE Medpro won the first of its two Government contracts for facemasks and medical gowns.
The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) is currently suing the company for a £122m “breach of contract and unjust enrichment”.
The acquisition of the Glasgow properties – a collection of 1850s townhouses – started in December 2020 when No 19 was bought for £1.7m, according to Land Registry records.
In May 2021, four flats worth around £3.4m were purchased in a single day and it was around this time the NCA launched its investigation.
The last of the nine Park Circus properties identified were acquired in August 2022.
Some of the homes have been turned into luxury flats and were purchased by three companies – Bagshaw Ltd, Breck Ltd, and Preaban Ltd – all incorporated in the Isle of Man.
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Under the court order, the Park Circus addresses can be rented out but not sold.
A spokesman for the couple said: “The final court order comes as a result of a consensual process during which negotiations took place with the CPS.
“It allows the wider businesses and assets of the Barrowman family to operate normally and free from any restrictions or uncertainties.
“Doug and Michelle did not contest the application and were happy to offer up these assets, which means they can begin the task of proving their innocence more quickly.”
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