Media reports suggest that Baroness Michelle Mone has been sighted in Mayfair. Meanwhile the UK government is suing a UK Company associated with her, PPE Medpro Ltd, for £122 million for the supply of unusable medical gowns. Costs are accumulating at a rate of £61,000 per week for storage of the gowns.
You can read a detailed article here about how Michelle Mone and her husband Douglas Barrowman siphoned off profits of £100 million from contracts awarded through the government’s VIP procurement channel.
According to the latest accounts of PPE Medpro Ltd it has net assets of only £3,492,404. To support this, it has £591,093 in unspecified investments, and £4,031,893 in debtors—which may or may not be ultimately recoverable.
In May 2022 the Company recorded a mysterious debenture in favour of a BVI Company, Perree (PTC) Ltd. This means that Perree (PTC) Ltd has a fixed and floating charge over all of PPE Medpro’s assets—it has first call in the event of a liquidation. Given that the latest accounts only cover the period up to 31 March 2022, there is no borrowing shown, and it has to be asked why a company with zero employees and which does not appear from its accounts to be trading would wish to borrow anything of any significance. A cynic might think it was protecting what few assets it had.
All of this aside, I cannot help but question whether it’s worthwhile for the government to incur legal costs in pursuing a claim for £122 million which has negligible and questionable assets. A criminal investigation is needed in my humble opinion.
