Michelle Mone's husband Doug Barrowman fails to get £5m fraud case thrown out
The wealthy husband of Baroness Mone went on trial for tax fraud yesterday after failing to get the case thrown out.
Doug Barrowman and six co-defendants are on trial in Spain in a £5m embezzlement case.Bra tycoon Michelle Mone was not with her 58-year-old husband in court, who faces five and a half years in jail if found guilty. The pair are separately under investigation for fraud by the National Crime Agency for their part in a £200m “VIP lane” PPE deal first exposed by the Mirror. Around £75m of their assets have been frozen by court order but the pair deny all wrongdoing.
Barrowman arrived at court in the Northern Spanish city of Santander this morning [Tuesday] with hopes of an early acquittal before he took the stand. Doug Barrowman’s lawyer claimed statute of limitations legislation meant it was too late to proceed against him. But the three judges ruled the case should go ahead.
The case relates to Barrowman’s joint ownership of a Spanish cable plant and the payment of €6.3m (£5.4m) to a connected British company 15 years ago. Spanish state prosecutors states the payment was for “non-existent” services and was syphoned out of local firm B3 Cable and transferred to the UK for an “illicit benefit”.
The seven businessmen on trial all allegedly profited personally through cash or other benefits like pensions or bonuses. B3 later collapsed with the loss of 213 jobs. The start of the six-day public hearing at Cantabria Provincial Court began with two of the seven defendants taking the stand. Barrowman is due to give evidence tomorrow [Wednesday].
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An earlier civil case in 2016 cleared the man of blame over the bankruptcy in 2012 of the €18.8 million (£16 million) cable factory they bought in May 2008 with bank finance. But Glasgow-born Barrowman, one of the two largest shareholders in now-defunct B3 Cable Solutions Spain, was charged after a separate criminal probe.
State prosecutors want him jailed for three years if convicted of misappropriation and two and a half years for the alleged tax crime.
Associates Paul Ruocco and Mark Williams, who together with Barrowman held nearly 60 per cent of B3 Cable’s shares, are facing identical prison demands.
Four other men, former B3 Cable directors named as David Powell, Timothy Eve, Stephen Ellis and Michael Walton, risk being jailed for up to six years each if convicted of both charges. The prosecution case revolves around a €6.3 million (£5.4m) payment by the cable firm in July 2008 to a “linked” UK company called Axis Ventura which Barrowman founded and several of the defendants were directors of.
Mone was not with her husband in court on Tuesday (Instagram)The British businessmen say the payment was a consultancy fee for work related to the cable firm purchase and bank finance securement. But Spanish state prosecutors, and prosecutors acting for Spain’s Tax Agency, claimed Axis Ventura did no work on the deal. The tax charge relates to the fact part of the payment - €1.7 million (£1.4m) - was offset against tax, allegedly defrauding the Spanish Treasury out of €508,000 ( €433,000).
Prosecutors are also seeking fines of between £1.3 million and £1.7 million for each of the defendants on conviction. Axis Ventura’s former finance director David Powell said today Barrowman had a leading role in the cable factory purchase. Ernesto Saguillo, one of the three judges who threw out the attempts to have the trial halted at the eleventh-hour, said: “Whether questions like the time limit on the tax crime allegation has been interrupted or not is something we will deal with when it comes to verdict and sentencing.”
Mr Barrowman declined to comment as he left court in a taxi yesterday. It comes as around £75m of assets linked to Barrowman and Mone, 52, have been frozen or restrained by court order, it emerged last week. The court order obtained by the Financial Times covers a string of assets including a six-bedroom Belgravia townhouse, a country estate on the Isle of Man and nine properties in Glasgow, owned through offshore companies.
It also covers 15 accounts at upmarket banks Coutts, Hoares and Goldman Sachs. The court order, issued in December, blocks the pair from selling some assets and places restrictions on others. It followed an application by the Crown Prosecution Service under the Proceeds of Crime Act and was agreed to by Mone and Barrowman.
Their spokesman said: “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 Department for Health is suing PPE Medpro for more than £130m for gowns it says were unsterile and can’t be used in the NHS. PPE Medpro is fighting the claims. Baroness Mone has admitted she regrets lying to the Mirror about her links to PPE Medpro but insists she and her husband have done nothing wrong.
They accept that £65 million in profits from PPE Medpro were transferred to trusts and accounts connected to Mr Barrowman and that Baroness Mone and her children stand to benefit. Last month, PPE Medpro funded a 70-minute documentary released on YouTube and the couple appeared on Laura Kuenssberg’s prime-time BBC politics show, complaining they had been made “scapegoats” for the Government’s wider failings on PPE.
The Mirror has revealed the couple are having a £80m firesale of some of their most prized possessions - a string of properties in Europe and the Caribbean, a yacht and a private jet - slashing the asking price of some assets.
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