The company linked to Baroness Michelle Mone owes £39m in unpaid tax, it has been revealed.
The news of the PPE Medpro’s unpaid tax bill comes just weeks after the company was found to have breached a government PPE contract, and ordered to repay the full £122m it received.
Last month, the firm was put into administration. Documents from the administrator on Tuesday revealed the sum still owed to HMRC, which the Guardian reports appears to be corporation tax.
The administrators’ filings show the company has £672,774 available to unsecured creditors.
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The debt owed in tax is bigger than previously thought, the BBC reports.
PPE Medpro ws set up by a consortium led by Mone’s husband, Doug Barrowman. At the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, Mone recommended the company to then Cabinet Minister Michael Gove, and the firm later secured its first government contract through a so-called VIP lane.
In October, the High Court ordered PPE Medpro to repay £122m to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) after breaching a PPE contract for supplying gowns that didn’t meet certification requirements for sterility.
The company was also ordered to repay the money with interest. This means the total owed to the DHSC stands at £148m, according to the preliminary statement by the administrators Forvis Mazars, filed at Companies House dated 30 October.
After the company was put into administration – the day before the High Court ruling was made public – Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the government would pursue the company “with everything we’ve got” to recover the cash.
Mone and Barrowman both denied for years that they were involved in PPE Medpro.
But in 2023, she admitted to the BBC that this was a lie, and revealed her and her children stood to gain from the profits of around £60m, which had been placed into a trust by her husband.
Mone insisted she had done nothing wrong aside from denying her links to the company though.
Following the ruling, she has claimed her and her husband have been scapegoated and made the “poster couple for the PPE scandal.”