Legal Threats to Byline Times’ Reporting on the PPE Procurement Scandal | The Byline Intelligence Team reports on the legal threats from PPE Medpro, a firm awarded £200 million in Government PPE deals

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  1. It starts when Byline asks PPE Medpro if they’re connected to Michelle Mone (a Tory peer) or her husband Douglas Barrowman.

    Medpro fire back legal threats: “Your email has been sent onto our legal lawyer as your comments are defamatory! We are putting you on notice and you will hear from us by tomorrow”

    As opposed to their illegal lawyer? Whatever.

    Then Medpro chief Anthony Page follows up the next day: “we will instruct our lawyers immediately” if Byline publish anthing inaccurate or misleading.

    Page, a senior employee of Barrowman’s wealth management specialists Knox Group, [“seems to know very little about medical products”](https://nitter.net/Shiftytherat1/status/1466092464280948746#m).

    He was also “the registered secretary of MGM Media – the company that manages Mone’s personal brand, according to the House of Lords register of financial interests, until he quit the role on the same day that PPE Medpro was set up” ([Financial Times](https://archive.ph/4Svfq#selection-2055.0-2055.418)).

    Page tells Byline neither Barrowman nor Mone have any “role or functions” in Medpro, nor in their acquiring contracts.

    Later the government reveal Mone referred PPE Medpro to the “VIP lane” fast track procurement process, leading to the £200m contract they got. Still later it comes out that Mone (a Tory peer) used private emails to deliver a [“sales pitch”](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/mar/24/michael-gove-private-emails-ppe-deals-tory-linked-firms) to procurement minister Lord Agnew.

    Then early this month Barrowman admits he [does indeed stand to gain financially](https://archive.ph/ikoxu#selection-933.0-934.0) from PPE Medpro’s £200m government contracts, pitched by his wife, a Tory peer, to Lord Agnew, another Tory peer and a government procurement minister.

    The 25 million gowns supplied by PPE Medpro were never used after failing inspection.

    Along the way, six properties linked to Barrowman and Mone were raided by the National Crime agency [reportedly](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/29/nca-launches-investigation-ppe-firm-linked-to-michelle-mone) investigating fraud related to the contracts.

    Meanwhile, Byline’s John Lubbock is asking [“where did all that money go to?](https://twitter.com/jwsal/status/1531624031908253697) Their recent accounts shows assets of less than £5 million.” (see [balance sheet](https://nitter.net/pic/media%2FFUFr6edXsAA5ZNR.png%3Fname%3Dorig).)

    Lubbock might be interested, if he hasn’t already seen it, in [this 2021 twitter thread](https://nitter.net/Shiftytherat1/status/1466092458282991623) from “Shifty”, who has some interesting speculation based on the facts:

    > The only real director to appear on the filings of the Knox shellcos is Maurice Stimler

    and

    > [Stimler family company] Loudwater Trade & Finance reported an enormous spike in sales, profits and cash generation in the year to Sept ’20, which is when PPE Medpro infamously won those contracts.

    > The sales growth of ~£150m is similar in scale

    For the period 1st Jan 2021 to the present, the BBC’s website has had [nothing at all to say](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22michelle+mone%22+site%3Abbc.co.uk&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F2021%2Ccd_max%3A) about Michelle Mone, it appears.

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