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- "The Guardian " از ARMINIC PODCAST توسط ARMINIC.com. منتشرشده: 2024. ترک 106. سبک: PODCAST.
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This is the Guardian leading entrepreneur or lucky baroness, the story of Michelle Moen. So I can’t begin to explain what an honor it is to be making my maiden speech in your lordship’s house today. When Michelle Moan made her first speech as a baroness back in 2016, she was seen as a breath of fresh air in the House of Lords. Working class, scottish, glamorous. It’s vital, self made. I was lucky that my mom and dad taught me dreams can come true if you work hard, be honest and never, ever give up. Within just a handful of years, Moan has become mired in a scandal that has seen her accused of profiting from the COVID pandemic, of exploiting her political connections, of being involved with a company that was fast tracked to win government contracts. For months now, she and her husband, Doug Barrowman, have been under investigation for fraud by the National Crime Agency. Moen has taken a leave of absence from the House of Lords. So Michelle Moen, since the revelations began in the Guardian newspaper, is taking a leave of absence with immediate effect. While she, as it’s put by her team, clears her name, the Guardian’s David Kahn has revealed the twists and turns that have seen Moen deny any involvement in PP Medpro, to confessing that she had lied to the media all along. It wasn’t just lying, it was a sustained operation with lawyers sending formal legal threats, essentially, to us making these statements, which essentially they’re now admitting were false, were untrue. And now there’s even more from the Guardian. I’m Nasheen Iqbal. Today in focus, Baroness Michelle Moen and the unraveling of the PPE Medpro scandal. David Khan, you’re the Guardian’s investigations correspondent. You’ve been reporting on Michelle Moen over the past few years. But to understand where we’ve ended up, I think we need to start at the very beginning. What do we know about her upbringing? So Michelle Moen grew up in quite poor part of Glasgow as a wee girl. I grew up in a tenement flat in the east end of Glasgow with no bath or shower and only a cupboard for a bedroom. But she says that she was very entrepreneurial, even when she was very young. I started my first business when I was ten years old. I had a paper round and by the time I was eleven, I had 17 teenagers working for me. And then she worked for a fruit and veg shop and got headhunted by the sweet shop across the road, who paid me 15 pence more an hour. So I can tell your lordships I was off like a shot. And she left school at 15. I think she says, without any qualifications. I had nothing except passion, determination and a can do attitudes. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those are the basic ingredients required to be an entrepreneur. So her story is all about being a very successful entrepreneur, even when she was very, very young. In her telling, she grafted as a child to become this sort of mini businesswoman. And then later, Michelle Mon moved on to the business that made her name Ultimo, the underwear brand. And at the beginning, she claimed her bras were used in a major Hollywood movie. Michelle’s gel filled bra became an overnight success in the year 2000, after Julia Roberts wore one in the film Erin Brockovich, something that was later completely denied by the film’s costume designer. But she did build Ultima in the 90s, as this must have brand all over tabloid magazines and talk show sofas. David, how successful was it? So she started this company with her first husband, Michael Moan. After years of working for others, getting married and having children, I decided to go it alone. I started in my bedroom and against all the odds, turned it into a successful global brand. It was kind of the crossover of celebrity culture and it was glamorous bras and underwear and she had some celebrities to model them. So these are all of York girls, are they? Or a selection of. Yeah, a selection of. Not all of them. I recognise. You’ve got Rachel Hunter, Rachel Hunter, Penny Lancaster, Helena Christensen, Sarah Harden, Mel B. The list goes on and on. And, yeah, you know, it was pictures and the photo shoots were eagerly devoured by magazines and celebrity publications. That’s New York Fashion Week. The male Michelle. Yeah, what’s that one? Hello. Magazine Michelle. The Michelle Wall. And so, particularly in Scotland, she became well known through Ultimo. And there was a general image of glamour and fame and success. And so she wasn’t publicity shy, was she? I mean, how did she manage to sell herself as one of Britain’s foremost businesswomen? She’s not publicity shy at all. I went to the launch in London and we had surgeons, well, actors dressed as surgeons. I dressed them all up as plastic surgeons, saying, ban the ultimo bra. And I got so much press coverage and the police came up and said, who’s responsible for this? I said, me. And he says, well, move. Right now. We’re going to arrest you. I said, I’ll get me more publicity. Arrest me. She was very much into PR photo shoots, becoming kind of like the personality of Ultimo, the personality of a very successful entrepreneur. With her story of coming from a deprived background in Glasgow. I’m going to show people that someone from the East End who hasn’t done well at school can still make something of their lives and sort of positioning herself and ultimo in the kind of glamour, celebrity, publicity world. And yet it wasn’t all smooth sailing behind the scenes. And we know that during the divorce between Michelle and her husband, Michael Moen, Ultimo ran into trouble. I do believe that if you take your business home to the household, either you will unfortunately get a divorce or your business will go bust. David, what happened in 2008, that was one of its best years, and it made a profit of nearly a million pounds. But 2010 to eleven, coinciding with the breakup of her marriage to Michael Moan, Ultimo starts making losses and by 2012, it’s in serious financial difficulties. Michael Moan ends up leaving the business and Michelle Moan is desperate to find a buyer and she ends up finding this sri lankan company, Mas, that take Ultimo over in 2013. The government themselves said that she’d sold an 80% stake in 2014 in a multimillion pound sale. But we’ve seen in a legal document, in an employment tribunal judgment, that the total takeover of Ultimo by the sri lankan company was 1.3 million. And that was after Michelle and Michael Moan had half each and she had to buy Michael’s state, plus another small state, and it was taken over by Mas as a Rescue, but they didn’t ever manage to put it back on its feet. And it did end up getting wound up. So 2018, they decided to wind Ultimo up. And yet, despite this, in 2015, the then prime minister David Cameron appoints Michelle Mon as the government’s entrepreneurship czar. What exactly did that mean and what did she do? The on entrepreneurship tsar was actually something very particular. And it was to lead a review for the Department of Work and Pensions, whose minister at the time was Ian Duncan Smith. And it was all about trying to support people in deprived areas to set up their own businesses. Ian Duncan Smith asked me to head a review on a subject really close to my heart, boosting startup businesses in deprived areas. And the focus of it was really about what levers of the benefit system and of public money and of startup loans could there be to help people who don’t have a lot of money set up very small scale businesses? We don’t actually know too much about it. I’ve asked both her and the government a series of detailed questions about it, because on the 1 March 2016, they published this report. And Michelle Mona self tweeted a video of herself saying that Downing street had only just given a one day’s notice. Hi, guys. Welcome to my London office. I’ve just finished mentoring a bunch of entrepreneurs, and Downing street have been on the phone. They’re launching the review tomorrow, three months early. Final parts in June. Thanks to everyone who’s taken part. And she said that there would be a final part in June 2016, but there never was. And also that she was working with banks to set up a nationwide network of what she called enterprise hubs. But that never happened either. The government, David Cameron’s government and Ian Duncan Smith, they really promoted this image of Michelle Moen as a very successful businesswoman. And it was the same month, just later in August 2015, that David Cameron appointed her as a member of the House of Lords. My Lords, I am devoted to helping achieve our goals for the people of this country. I look forward to playing a full and active role in your lordship’s house. Right. So from this journey, as entrepreneurships are, she eventually ended up in the House of Lords as Baroness mon of Mayfair. David, how did that go down? At the time when David Cameron appointed her to the House of Lords, she was described as leading entrepreneur. But what’s very interesting looking back is how outspoken the criticism was from business people in Scotland who said that she was not the successful businesswoman of the level that the government seemed to be promoting. And one business figure actually wrote to David Cameron and said in the letter, essentially, her pr image is far in excess of the actual success of the business. And I’ve got that letter. And he actually itemized for the government what financial state the different businesses were in at the time, including Ultimo, and he said that Ultimo had been taken over because otherwise it would have gone insolvent. He put that in his letter to Cameron. David, putting aside Michelle Moan’s business record for a moment, let’s talk about her record in the House of Lords. Can you tell me how active she’s been as Baroness Moan? She has voted, but over the five years that she was in the House of Lords, from 2016 to 2020 inclusive, I think she spoke once in each year in the House of Lords. So she’s spoken five times altogether since being made appear in 2015. I think it’s really important to say we get confused about the House of Lords being an honor, like a knighthood or an OBE or an MBE, but being put in the House of Lords is very, very different from that. It’s being put in parliament. In the legislature, you become somebody who makes the laws for the country. In 2020, Covid, of course, happened. The UK government sets up this vip lane for companies to apply to provide vital medical supplies such as PPE. And we know, without the usual level of oversight given to government contracts, upsteps Baroness Moan, how did she initially promise to help the government? In May 2020, she approached first Michael Gove, who was cabinet office minister, and then another minister in the Cabinet Office, Lord Agnew, promising to supply PPE, or saying she could source PPE through, quote, my team in Hong Kong. So after Moan’s recommendation in June 2020, the government signed two contracts with PPE Medpro, worth a total of 203,000,000 pounds. Now, this newly formed company, which had just been set up the month before, agreed to supply urgently needed personal protective equipment, surgical gowns, masks, so on, for NHS workers working through the COVID emergency. Doug Barriman, Michelle Moane’s second husband, he seemed to be somehow involved. And it’s at this point that alarm bells began ringing for you and you came to the story, David, what did you report? So the PPE Medpro contract was published. It was the Good Law Project, the not for profit campaign organisation, that they were really scrutinizing all the companies that were given contracts and pointing out that there seemed to be links. So there were apparent links between this company, PP Medpro, and Michelle Moen. So I just made inquiries of Michelle Moan and her husband, Doug Barriman, like, yeah, there are apparent links, like, people who are working for this company, work for Doug Barrowman and did used to work for Moan. So are you connected? Are you involved with this? And we just got these really emphatic denials from their lawyers, essentially saying, no, they’re not involved at all. So how did they portray the company? They really painted a picture, which was that PP Medpro was a group of very experienced medical supplies professionals who they weren’t naming, but who’d been asked by the government to step up and provide PPE. And Doug Barriman’s company, which is a financial services company, was just providing, like, a registered office directors who just do the sort of basic company stuff that needs doing. And I can absolutely remember them using the word bookkeeping, that the services include bookkeeping. So they painted this picture of Barrowman’s company just doing these very basic, essentially admin services for a group of highly experienced medical supplies professionals. And it had nothing to do with Michelle Moan or Doug Barriman themselves. And it would be defamatory to say that she was even associated with PPE Medpro. And that’s where we were. At the end of 2020, we know that her office, Michelle Moan’s office, have said that they’re going to be taking potentially legal action about these allegations against her in 2021. The government itself had to publish the fact that Michelle Moan had recommended this company had approached the government. And even then, her lawyers were still saying that doesn’t mean that anything that they said in 2020 was false. And that’s all she did. She never did anything else. She just approached the government to make the offer, and then she didn’t do anything else. And then this line of argument crumbles. David, last year you reported that not only had Michelle Moan lobbied government for PPE Medpro contract, but that 29 million pounds from that deal was put into a trust of which Moan and her children were beneficiaries, and that she and husband was subject to an internal investigation by HSBC. Yeah. Well, in November 2022, I reported, based on a leaked document produced by HSBC Bank, Doug Barraman had been paid at least 65 million pounds from the profits of PPE Medpro, and he then transferred 29 million to a trust, an offshore trust, of which Michelle Moan and her three adult children were beneficiaries. But even then, at that stage, both of them were denying that they’d been involved at all. And they didn’t really reply very substantively to that piece, except Doug Barrowman’s lawyer said a lot of it was inaccurate. And I think Michelle Moane’s lawyer at that point said she couldn’t comment. So, David, the last time you spoke to same focus about the Michelle Mon story, I do remember it came with a lot of legal caveats. Moen absolutely denied her involvement with PP and Medpro. Her lawyers denied she had profited in any way from that Covid contract. Then in December last year, a documentary appears on YouTube, paid for by PP Medpro, titled Baroness Moan and the PPE scandal. And then a bombshell drops. My family have gone through hell with the media over my career, and I didn’t want another big hoohah in the press and my family to be involved in it. Michelle Moane appeared on tv to give an interview to the BBC. David, what did she have to say? She did the interview with her husband, Doug Barriman, and they had quite a lot to say. But the key thing which leapt out was that they’re now admitting that, yes, they absolutely were involved in PPE Medpro. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing. I wasn’t trying to pull the wheel over anyone’s eyes, and I regret, and I’m sorry for not seeing straight out, yes, I am involved. She admitted that she lied to the media, which obviously means that she lied to us, saying to the press, I’m not involved to protect my family. Can I just make this clear? It’s not a crime. I’m essentially sitting in the same place where we’d received all these legal threats from three different lawyers. They can be really aggressive and they can be really personalized as well. Like the lawyer’s style is really personalized against the reporter who’s reporting on it. And it wasn’t just lying, it was instructing lawyers to threaten the newspapers, the media. I’m seeing Barriman admit to. He admitted to around, he said, 60 million pound profits. The two contracts in total came to a value of 202,000,000 pounds. Medpro made a return on its investment of about, realistically, about 30% to about 60 million pounds. Yeah, about that. Honestly, have we seen anything like this? That’s not a crime to say to the press, that’s not a crime. Of course, the government was aware that she was involved. We knew with our contact base that we could actually supply the volume and we believe we could get competitive prices. So Michelle reached out to Michael Gove, who then referred onto Lord Agnew, who was coordinating referrals. And also we know that she’d been in touch with other ministers, trying to get other contracts and testing contracts and so on. And I’ve always felt like the government itself watched her threatening the media with lawyers and said nothing. They just allowed all this to happen. Well, David, you’ve kept digging into Michelle Moane’s business dealings. What have you found out more recently? One element of these interviews that absolutely leapt out at me was Michelle Moane saying, and Doug Barrowman, they both said that one of the reasons why they’d got involved in supplying PPE was because Michelle had strong contacts in the Far East. Michelle and I looked at each other one day and said, you know, we have strong contacts here in the Far east. Essentially, Michelle reached out to her contacts, but our investigations have managed to go from this picture that was painted by them in 2020, which is some unnamed medical supplies expert, for which Doug Barriman’s company was just providing admin and bookkeeping, basically, to really, really understanding what the operation was. We know from leaked documents that we’ve seen that PP Medpro, which is Barrowman’s company, their commitment within the PP medpration was to use what they called their extensive network to secure the contracts from the UK government. And they contracted with a separate company in London called Loudwater, which is a trading company and importing company. And it was Loudwater’s role in the agreements that it was going to source the PPE. This company, Loudwater, paid another company that was registered in Cyprus for an introduction to a Hong Kong company. This company in Hong Kong. It seems like it’s a relatively small company, and its own website advertises, even now, still advertises small electrical goods like kettles and toasters and alarm clocks. And we’ve asked all of them many times, what experience of PPE did you have before the pandemic? Because it’s very hard to see that there was any. And we’ve never really had a reply to that question. So why on earth would three different companies be involved and a company be involved that had to be paid for an introduction if she’d just reached out to her contacts in the Far east? And we asked them that question and we haven’t had a response to that directly either. And it seems that essentially, overall, from the 200 million pound contracts, 100 million was profit, 100 million pounds of public money was profit in a public health cris from basic PPE in the COVID pandemic at a time when there was no vaccine. So it was really serious life protecting equipment. I can’t see what we’ve done wrong. Doug and the consortium have simply delivered a contract, a delivery contract of goods. So the three companies that worked in this chain with PP Medpro, loudwater numer trading, Eric Baer. There’s no suggestion they did anything improper. And PPE Medpro made a lot of money out of this, but they did at least fulfill the contract and supply the PPE they promised. Remind us what happened to it. So the contracts were 203,000,000 pounds. Two contracts, one to supply millions of face masks and one to supply millions of sterile surgical gowns. The face masks were accepted by the government and I think that they were fine from what we know. But these sterile surgical gowns, which are very, very important, PPE, they’re not just the basic gowns that perhaps people in care homes wear on inspection in the UK, the gowns were rejected as not fit for purpose and the government is suing them. The actual lawsuit is public and we’ve been able to report on that. I think they’re still being stored somewhere. And the government wants PPE Medpro to pay for all the storage costs as well. And PPE Medpro’s argument, Barriman’s argument is, no, the gowns were perfectly fine, all the certification was fine. It’s just that the government had overordered PPE by then and they’re trying to make a case that the gowns weren’t safe and we’re entitled to keep the money and they’re defending the claim. Coming up, the criminal investigation into Michelle Moen. David, Michelle Moan has been placed under investigation by the House of Lords Commissioner for standards. And PPE Medpro has become the subject of a potential fraud investigation by the national crime agents. See, what will they be looking into? The National Crime Agency has said from May 2021, they started an investigation and it’s into the Procurement of the contracts. So it seems to be into how did they get the contracts from the government. And obviously, we know that Michelle Mone approached Michael Gove and Lord Agnew and it was put into the vip lane. And in the YouTube film, it was strongly indicated that they’re looking at criminal offences of bribery and fraud. It. In April 2022, the National Crime Agency searched the homes and offices of Doug Barriman and Baroness moan in London and on the Isle of Man and seized computers and documents. The NCA investigation into them both is in relation to allegations of conspiracy to defraud, fraud by false representation and bribery, which they both categorically deny. Mon is saying that she was very, very much involved in the actual operation, as well as just getting the contracts. They’re wanting to make the case that they stepped up in the pandemic to supply PPE and that they haven’t done anything wrong. Did you attempt to defraud the DHSE? Absolutely not. How can I defraud them when they knew I was involved? There’s over 1400 emails and communication on WhatsApps and phone calls. How can they say they didn’t know I was involved? They knew everything. And the House of Lords investigation is into whether she breached the code of conduct, which is likely to focus on the fact that she didn’t register an interest in PPE Medpro. Right, which you have to register an interest in any business that you’ve got a financial interest in. Obviously, at the time, 2020, she said she wasn’t involved at all. But now that she’s saying that she was very much involved and acknowledging that her husband at least made multimultimillions of profit out of it, the argument is going to be that should she have registered the interest? I mean, that is quite the 180 reversal, going from categorically denying she had any connection to PPE Medpro to now insisting that everyone must have known that she was. David, in the meantime, there is no shortage of public outrage at the fact that Michelle Moane remains a member of the house of lords. She’s taken a leave of absence for now. But how do you think all of this will now play out for her? Well, obviously, the National Crime Agency has an investigation ongoing into Michelle Moen and her husband, and that is a criminal investigation into allegations of fraud and bribery, which is potentially very serious. In their interviews, they said that they both deny any wrongdoing. And, you know, I think that you have to go back to David Cameron’s decision to put her in the House of Lords. I, Michelle Baroness, mon to swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance. I think for the Conservatives, this has become a huge scandal because if she wasn’t a conservative peer, she wouldn’t have had that access, probably, and she wouldn’t have been fast tracked into the vip lane, which was for people with political connections. But as far as I can remember, Rishi Sunak just said things like, I take this issue incredibly seriously. What I’d say is the government takes these things incredibly seriously, which is why they’re in the pursuing legal action against a company concerned in these matters. That’s how seriously I take it and the government takes it. They just don’t seem to acknowledge that anything that they did was flawed in any way. And they still don’t even say that they shouldn’t have set up the vip lane in the way that they did. But how on earth, in a life threatening pandemic, when we’re having lockdowns, when we’re closing schools, when we’re having to protect the NHS from collapsing? Instead of prioritizing actual experienced PPE professionals, they prioritized people with political connections. And they said, well, if that’s coming from a conservative peer or if that’s coming from a conservative MP, we’re going to treat that as credible. And that is honestly such a mountainous scandal that still needs looking at. David, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. That was the Guardian’s investigations correspondent, David Kahn. Do follow his reporting on this story and read his latest piece on Michelle Mon’s career@theguardian.com. A spokesperson for Moan Barriman and PP Medpro responded to questions from the Guardian for this story. They said Michelle was honoured to be asked to join the House of lords by David Cameron after her role in the scottish referendum campaign. Her appointment was duly vetted by the House of Lords Appointments Commission. At the time, the spokesperson added, any suggestion that Michelle ran a successful lingerie company for many years but did not have any experience in manufacturing is laughable. Neither David Cameron nor Ian Duncan Smith responded to invitations to comment. A Cabinet Office spokesperson pointed out that all peerages are vetted by the House of Lords Appointments Commission. That’s it for today. I’m Nash. Nick Ball. And this episode was produced by George McDonough. Sound design is by Solomon King. The executive producer was Phil Maynard. Have a lovely weekend. We’ll see you again on Monday. This is the Guardian.
