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Under-fire bra tycoon Michelle Mone has put the luxury villa on the Algarve where she was spotted up for sale for £6 million – as she battles to clear her name amid allegations that she benefitted from a company she recommended for a Covid contract.
Baroness Mone has taken leave of absence from the House of Lords after being engulfed in controversy over her links to PPE Medpro, which won government contracts during the pandemic.
Now MailOnline has learned that the Conservative peer and her husband Doug Barrowman have placed their six-bedroom holiday home on the market just weeks after they were pictured enjoying a sunshine break there.
The couple only acquired the mansion last July for £7million – through an offshore company.
They are seeking to offload it just weeks after their secret sunshine getaway was exposed.
The couple only acquired the Algarve mansion last July for £7million. Now Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman are looking to sell the six-bed property
Mone is currently battling to clear her name amid allegations that she benefitted from a company she recommended for a Covid contract. She is pictured at the Pride of Britain awards in London, September 28, 2015
An upmarket real estate agency in the exclusive Quinta do Lago resort has been entrusted with selling the house for just over £6 million (€6.95 million).
Baroness Mone, 51, was pictured walking her three dogs near the property at the start of the month after arriving by private jet with her Glasgow-born business magnate husband.
Barrowman, 58, was photographed playing golf in the sun and the couple were also spotted relaxing in local restaurants.
The couple enjoyed their downtime as Michelle, who made her fortune from lingerie firm Ultimo, continued to be investigated by the National Crime Agency as part of a fraud probe into a Covid supplies company she recommended to ministers.
Their £20million London house and Isle of Man estate, part of a property empire which also includes a £40million Caribbean home, was raided last April by NCA officers as part of the investigation.
She is also being investigated by the House of Lords Commissioners for Standards over her alleged links to PPE Medpro. She is accused of breaching the Lords Code of Conduct by failing to declare an interest in the firm as well as by lobbying for it to win the huge deals to provide surgical gowns and face masks during the Covid pandemic.
PPE Medpro, set up by Anthony Page who has publicly documented connections to businesses run by Mone and her husband, is being sued for more than £130 million by the Department of Health over claims its gowns could not be used by the NHS.
Both the couple, who allegedly received tens of millions of pounds in profits from PPE Medpro through offshore trusts before buying their Algarve home, and PPE Medpro deny any wrongdoing.
An upmarket real estate agency in the exclusive Quinta do Lago resort has been entrusted with selling the house for just over £6 million
The villa had already been completely renovated before Mone and her husband purchased it and they are thought to have used it sparingly
Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman have placed their six-bedroom holiday home on the market. They are both pictured at the Cheltenham Festival, March 15, 2019
Mone said last December she was taking a ‘leave of absence’ from the House of Lords ‘in order to clear her name of the allegations that have been unjustly levelled.’
The luxury sunshine pad she and her husband are trying to sell is being marketed as a ‘luxurious villa in a prime location.’
The 5,400sq ft three-storey mansion, which boasts five bathrooms as well as six bedrooms and a large pool and outside barbecue area, sits on a 21,500 sq ft plot.
The house features a beautiful suspended staircase between the ground floor over the basement and the top floor with two suites including a master suite opening onto a private terrace with ‘golf views.’
A property description enthuses: ‘This magnificent villa is surrounded by a private garden that merges naturally with the beauty of the surrounding landscape’ and goes on to describe the house as ‘incomparable.’
It also highlights the large bathroom on the top floor with ‘his and hers sinks’ and a lower floor storage room it says can be turned into a cinema room or studio.
The villa had already been completely renovated before Mone and her husband purchased it and they are thought to have used it sparingly.
One well-placed insider said: ‘They’ve not said why they want to sell but the decision to put it on the market is very recent.
Baroness Mone is being investigated by the House of Lords Commissioners for Standards over her alleged links to PPE Medpro
The luxury Algarve pad Mone and her husband are trying to sell is being marketed as a ‘luxurious villa in a prime location’
‘People are obviously speculating it is linked to the fact that what they thought was a secret hideaway they had managed to keep away from prying eyes, has now been brought to light.’
Another said: ‘I’d be surprised if they’ve stayed there more than half a dozen times in the eight months they’ve had it.’
Asked earlier this month by a reporter who owned the villa, registered to a company in the US tax haven of Delaware, Baroness Mone snapped: ‘Nothing is owned by me. It’s all owned by my husband.’
Quinta do Lago is billed as Portugal’s most prestigious area and one of the best locations to live in Europe. It opened in the 1970s with a 27-hole golf course in an area of 550 hectares divided into high-end residences.
Currently there are five golf courses surrounded by properties valued between £3.5 and £14million.
Mone, from the East End of Glasgow, was made a life peer in 2015 by then-PM David Cameron and appointed as the government’s start-up business tsar.
She has been under the spotlight since it emerged she recommended PPE Medpro to the government’s ‘VIP lane’ for Covid contracts before the company had even been formed.
Mr Barrowman is facing a separate trial later this year in Spain along with six other Brits for alleged tax evasion and misappropriation following a northern Spanish cable factory buyout.
The Scot is insisting he has committed no wrongdoing and will fight a prosecution demand he should be jailed for five-and-a-half years if found guilty on both charges.
She voluntarily took a leave of absence from the Lords to fight the claims which a spokesperson has described as ‘unjustly levelled against her’.
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