The disgraced Conservative peer Michelle Mone and her husband have reportedly had about £75m of assets frozen or restrained by a court order.
The pair face an investigation by the National Crime Agency into alleged medical equipment fraud. The Financial Times reported that the frozen assets included a six-bedroom central London townhouse, a country estate on the Isle of Man, and 15 accounts with Coutts, C Hoare & Co and Goldman Sachs International.
Issued in December, the restraint order blocks Mone, a lingerie entrepreneur, and her husband, the financier Douglas Barrowman, from selling some of the assets and places restrictions on others.
Mone and Barrowman, who is based in the Isle of Man, agreed to the court order after an application by the Crown Prosecution Service under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
The court order was “a result of a consensual process during which negotiations took place with the CPS”, a spokesperson for Mone and Barrowman told the FT.
“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.”
The couple confirmed in a statement this month they were under investigation by the NCA, while claiming they were being “hung out to dry” over the government’s failings to source personal protective equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Barrowman accused the government of using the NCA “to threaten criminal proceedings” to force the couple to reach a settlement over PPE Medpro, a consortium he led and which is being sued by the UK government for £122m plus costs for “breach of contract and unjust enrichment”.
Barrowman said he and his family had been “treated as a punchbag by the media for the past three years” and “received death threats and a constant torrent of online and other abuse” as a result of the dispute.
The NCA is investigating allegations of fraud and bribery surrounding the company. Mone and Barrowman both deny the allegations.
Mone admitted last month she had lied to the media by denying her links to PPE Medpro, which made millions of pounds from a deal to supply PPE via the “VIP lane” after she referred it to ministers in May 2020.
On Thursday, the former Scotland secretary David Mundell said the former prime minister David Cameron, now foreign secretary, breached “proper process” when he appointed Mone to the House of Lords in 2015.
Mundell, the Conservative MP for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale, said Cameron appointed Mone without No 10 consulting the government’s Scotland Office, which is standard practice before awarding peerages to Scots.
Cameron and other Westminster Tories had been impressed by Mone when she backed the union in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014. She was already well known in Scotland through her lingerie business, Ultimo.