Michelle Mone has complained she is being treated like notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar after her bank accounts were reportedly frozen by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
The peer, who won government PPE contracts worth more than £200m during the pandemic, said on Sunday it had been “an extremely tough year of pain with frozen accounts”.
Baroness Mone said she has had an ‘extremely tough year’— (PA)
The NCA is believed to have ordered a freeze on Baroness Mone’s accounts a year ago to prevent her moving cash while it investigates allegations of fraud and bribery around her PPE firm, The Sunday Times reported.
One of those frozen is said to include an account at Coutts, an upmarket bank favoured by the rich and famous that was at the centre of the recent Nigel Farage banking row, the newspaper added.
“Under the Proceeds of Crime Act, I’ve been treated like Pablo Escobar,” Baroness Mone told The Sunday Times. “What happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
Escobar was dubbed “the king of cocaine” after amassing an estimated net worth of more than £20bn before he was killed in a shootout while running from the police in 1993.
Deceased Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was worth an estimated £20bn— (STF/AFP/Getty Images)
Baroness Mone, the multi-millionaire founder of lingerie brand Ultimo, was handed a peerage by former prime minister David Cameron in 2015. She stood to benefit from £60m in profit over a contract signed by her husband Doug Barrowman’s company PPE Medpro at the height of the Covid crisis.
She had recommended the firm to ministers but only admitted publicly last week that she stood to benefit from the proceeds.
PPE Medpro has been under investigation by the NCA since May 2021, with search warrants executed at Baroness Mone and Mr Barrowman’s homes in London and the Isle of Man, as well as the firm’s offices.
The government has also launched legal proceedings against PPE Medpro over £122m worth of gowns the Department for Health and Social Care believes were not fit for use.
Baroness Mone has taken a leave of absence from the Lords for more than a year as she attempts to “clear her name” over the scandal.
Baroness Mone and her husband being interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg— (BBC Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg)
She is facing cross-party calls to be removed from the Lords but has insisted she believes she did “nothing wrong”.
Appearing on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Baroness Mone claimed her life had been destroyed by allegations about the PPE profits, even though “we’ve only done one thing, which was lie to the press to say we weren’t involved”.
She denied having bought a yacht with the money and insisted the cash was her husband’s money.
“It’s not my yacht, it’s not my money,” she said. “That cash is my husband’s cash. It’s just like my dad going home with his wage packet on a Friday night and giving it to my mum.
“So she’s benefiting from that as well, but that cash is not my cash and is not my children’s cash. If one day, God forbid, my husband passes away before me, then I am a beneficiary as well as his children and my children.”
She also insisted that if Mr Barrowman divorced her she would receive nothing.
An NCA spokesperson said: “The NCA opened an investigation in May 2021 into suspected criminal offences committed in the procurement of PPE contracts by PPE Medpro.”
