An arrest has been made in connection with the criminal investigation into PPE Medpro, the company that was awarded large government personal protective equipment contracts during the Covid pandemic.
In a statement, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said a 46-year-old man had been arrested at his north London home.
The man is understood to have been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit fraud and of attempting to pervert the course of justice.
PPE Medpro secured two contracts worth £203m to supply PPE in the early months of the pandemic after normal competitive tendering regulations were suspended.
The Conservative peer Michelle Mone and her husband, Douglas Barrowman, who have both acknowledged they were involved in the company, have previously been interviewed under caution by NCA investigators. Barrowman is not the person arrested on Wednesday.
In media interviews they gave late in 2023, Mone and Barrowman adamantly denied any criminal wrongdoing in relation to PPE Medpro.
The NCA said: “A 46-year-old man from Barnet, London, was arrested this morning at his home address as part of an ongoing NCA investigation into suspected criminal offences committed in the procurement of PPE contracts by PPE Medpro. He is currently being interviewed by NCA officers.”
PPE Medpro was awarded contracts for the supply of millions of face masks and sterile surgical gowns in May and June 2020, after a first approach by Mone to the Cabinet Office ministers Michael Gove and Theodore Agnew, who were at the time responsible for procurement.
The contracts were processed rapidly through the government’s “VIP” high-priority lane, which the government operated for companies that had political connections. Standard procurement rules requiring competition for government contracts were suspended at the onset of the pandemic, due to the urgent need to secure medical supplies. The government published a list of high-priority lane companies in November 2021, in which it named Mone as the person who had referred PPE Medpro.
Mone, 52, rose to public prominence through the lingerie company Ultimo, which she founded in Scotland with her first husband, Michael Mone. David Cameron made her his “entrepreneurship tsar” in 2015, leading a review into ways of encouraging people from deprived communities to start their own business. He then appointed her to the House of Lords later the same year.
Barrowman, 59, is a Scottish businessman based in the Isle of Man, who is the chair and founder of an offshore private wealth management firm on the island, Knox Group.
In November 2022, the Guardian revealed that leaked documents produced by HSBC bank showed that Barrowman had been paid at least £65m from the profits of PPE Medpro, and had then transferred £29m into an offshore trust set up for the benefit of Mone and her three adult children.
In their media interviews last year, Barrowman confirmed that he had made more than £60m profit, and had transferred money into the trust; the couple said that his children were beneficiaries of the trust as well.
In December 2022, Mone announced that she was taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords, meaning she would no longer be an active member in the lawmaking function of the second chamber. A spokesperson said she was doing so “in order to clear her name of the allegations that have been unjustly levelled against her”.
For three years – from the government’s publication of the PPE Medpro contracts in late 2020 until their media interviews last year – Mone and Barrowman denied via their lawyers, in response to questions from the Guardian, that they were involved in the business of PPE Medpro.
In her interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg in December, Mone admitted that she had lied to the media, and said she was sorry for doing so, but pointed out that it was “not a crime” to do so.
The NCA launched its investigation into PPE Medpro in May 2021, then in April 2022 it executed search warrants at Mone and Barrowman’s homes, and at the company’s offices in London and the Isle of Man.
The NCA has since then confirmed that it is investigating PPE Medpro, saying in a statement: “The NCA opened an investigation in May 2021 into suspected criminal offences committed in the procurement of PPE contracts by PPE Medpro.”
The Lords commissioner for standards launched an investigation in January 2022 into Mone’s “alleged involvement in procuring contracts for PPE Medpro leading to potential breaches” of the code of conduct governing peers’ membership of parliament’s second chamber. The commissioner’s investigation is on hold due to the NCA’s criminal investigation.