Michelle Mone | Update: How Could £122 Million Just Vanish? | 4

David Conn was a character at the heart of our original series, and now he's giving Matt and Alice an update on the Michelle Mone scandal in light of major developments. From dramatic court rulings to luxury flats and ongoing criminal investigations, Conn pulls back the curtain on how a pandemic procurement deal spiralled into one of the most explosive British scandals of the decade. Plus: what did he make of Matt's impression of him in the original series? Do you have a suggestion for a scandal you would like us to cover? Or perhaps you have a question you would like to ask our hosts? Email us at [email protected] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alice Levine?

  Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of British Scandal ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.

• 0:14Matt Forde?

  From Wondery, I'm Matt Ford.

• 0:15Alice Levine?

  And I'm Alice Levine.

• 0:16Matt Forde?

  And this is British Scandal.

• 0:31Matt Forde?

  So Alice, how was it revisiting the Baroness Moan?

• 0:34Alice Levine?

  I mean, it's such a compelling story. There are so many parts of it that just have your jaw on the floor. I mean, a good exercise with British Scandal protagonists is to try and empathise and think about how our protagonists have got to where they are. She doesn't make it easy for you, though, does she? I mean, at the beginning, there's definitely a lot to be said about her chutzpah and about her kind of personal brand. You know, she puts herself front and centre. And she's obviously charismatic. Her instincts for how to get people's eyes on her product, you can't deny that. But I'm really struggling. I'm really, I'm really reaching here.

• 1:09Matt Forde?

  You are. And she doesn't make it easy, as you said. And people really think of that infamous Koonsberg interview with her. And Doug Barrowman, her husband and business partner, really got the tone completely wrong. And just a few months after that interview, the government initiated legal action against PPE Medpro. Then it all went very quiet. And almost two years later, the High Court ruled that PPE Medpro had breached its contract, a £122 million contract with the Department of Health and Social Care. And they've got to pay it back by the 15th of October 2025.

• 1:39Alice Levine?

  Just checking the old ICAL there. That has been and proverbially gone, hasn't it?

• 1:45Matt Forde?

  Yes, the deadline is now in the past. So this scandal has become even more scandalous. Which is why, in this bonus episode, we've got the journalist who's been following Michelle Moan from day one, right through the chaos of PPE, VIP lanes and the legal battles.

• 2:00Alice Levine?

  Here's the man Michelle Moan hates popping up in her inbox. It's The Guardian's award-winning investigative correspondent, David Kahn, the journalist who is key to uncovering the full scale of the VIP Lane scandal.

• 2:12Matt Forde?

  He's here to unpack how this scandal spiraled to where we are now. This isn't a revisit. This is a sequel to our Michelle Moan series. And trust me when I say this, things have got even messier.

• 2:29Speaker 02

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• 4:00Matt Forde?

  David, welcome to British Scandal. We ended our series in 2023 at the point where Michelle Mona had admitted she'd lied to the press about benefiting financially from the contract between the government and MedPro, and a lot has happened since then. The Department of Health sued PPE MedPro for £122 million for providing defective PPE, and they won. Did you think they'd be found guilty?

• 4:21Speaker 05

  Well, it's not guilty in that way, is it? Because it's not a criminal. This is separate from the criminal investigation, but... Did I think that the Department of Health would win the case that the gowns that they supplied weren't certified to be sterile? Yeah, I think I did think that they would win. This is something that the vast majority of us have absolutely no idea about, but it makes you realise just how like literally life and death important all of these rules and regulations are. Because for that PPE, those gowns to be sterile is a vital life protecting quality.

• 5:05Speaker 05

  These gowns would be used in operating theatres to stop infections. And having researched it myself quite in depth and reported on it and then followed the trial, read the documents, been to several days of it, I couldn't see the judge coming to any other decision really. So when it landed, it felt like she'd come to the conclusions that were sort of, were there on the evidence.

• 5:33Matt Forde?

  The deadline to pay the £122 million has been and gone. PPE MedPro missed it. With interest, it's now up to nearly £150 million. Do you think the government will ever see any of that money?

• 5:44Speaker 05

  Well, the government, this is part of the story now. So these gowns were supplied five years ago, when the government first sued was three years ago. But this is now a current issue and the government faces a real struggle to get any money back. There was no money, almost no money left in the company at all. And the day before the judgment was made public, the company was put into administration, which is a form of insolvency. But it owes the government £150 million, essentially public money, you know, from £122 million public money that was paid for the PPE.

• 6:22Matt Forde?

  And what legal levers are there? I mean, they've declared themselves insolvent, but can directors not be personally liable for that amount?

• 6:31Speaker 05

  The whole sort of structure of companies is that you set up a company so that you personally aren't going to be liable for all its debts if it fails, which is really important. It's important to enable people to set up businesses. But it means that there is limited liability of the individuals behind it. And it's therefore difficult. And there are difficult legal obstacles if the administrators, so these are the accountants who come in to work on an insolvent company. They face a lot of obstacles, basically, and facts that they would have to prove,

• 7:13Speaker 05

  which is all going to be expensive and time consuming if they are going to find any money, basically. There's no money in the company. So if they're going to find any money, you know, there's a lot of work to do and it's all got to be paid for. So actually, it sounds like they're probably not going to get the money. Well, they made a statement which said that they believe, they envisage that they will get money back and they envisage taking some court action against third parties who they didn't name. So they're being positive about it. But as I say, it's difficult, Matt. It's not straightforward. It's not like that company lost the case. It's a hundred and fifty million pound bill. As you say, the deadline was two weeks later from the court judgment, fifteenth of October,

• 7:58Speaker 05

  and bum, the company pays. There's no money. Obviously, we know that large profits were made by the company and that Doug Barrowman, as you've covered in the podcast, said that they made more than sixty million pounds profit. It's just that there's no money in the company. The company itself, there's no money there and it's insolvent.

• 8:24Alice Levine?

  Moan said on social media, Doug and I have been deliberately scapegoated and vilified in an orchestrated campaign designed to distract from catastrophic mismanagement of PPE procurement. How did you feel about that comment?

• 8:39Speaker 05

  Um, well, they've been saying, haven't they, since they started speaking out and admitting that they were involved and admitting that they lied about not being involved. They've been saying this thing about being made scapegoats. But I, you know, I mean, the way I respond to it is I kind of just report on what's in front of us, you know, it was a major court case, right? PP Medpro was properly represented by a big legal team. There was complete equality of legal teams in that courtroom. And they thrashed it out for, for basically three years and 12 days in court.

• 9:21Speaker 05

  They spent probably millions on each side on the best lawyers, whatever choice of lawyers that they had. And a very senior judge produced an 87 page judgment that ruled that the gowns were not fit for purpose, weren't certified to be sterile. So that's, it's quite a major outcome. And it's really for them to explain how they are scapegoats. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's hard for me to sort of comment on that, really.

• 9:57Matt Forde?

  The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, in an interview, some guy called Matt Ford, joked that she had a vendetta against Michelle Moan. From your reporting on the PP saga, how much of this do you think is driven by politics and personalities and how much by the legal issues?

• 10:12Speaker 05

  From my point of view, it's been reporting on issues of the highest public interest. How did our government, which was obviously Boris Johnson's government, spend massive amounts of public money on medical equipment? And obviously they had this VIP lane. Where they decided that they were going to prioritise offers of PPE that had come from recommendations from people with political connections. And that is an issue of the highest public interest to scrutinise that. Now, after my reporting at the end of 2022 about the profits that had been paid to Doug

• 10:57Speaker 05

  Barrowman and the money that had been transferred to the trust, I'm sure you'll remember there was a big outcry, it was a big public story, but there was also a lot of outcry in Parliament and speeches made by Labour who were then the opposition. And people were asking the question, well, what about these gowns? We know that they were rejected already three years ago now. What's happening with that? How are you getting the money back? And it was only after that that the government sued. So I have always wondered whether the government sued because of political pressure. That bit could have been a political momentum to actually sue them.

• 11:35Alice Levine?

  Another element of this is that Moan's been on leave from the House of Lords since the end of 2022 and said that she has no wish to return. Do you think she's jumping before she's pushed?

• 11:47Speaker 05

  I don't think we know that. I'm not sure if that reaction is to do with that. I think she's obviously saying she's completely disillusioned with the political process because they feel like they've been made scapegoats and they feel like, they probably feel like, well, she was a member of, a Conservative member of the House of Lords. She was appointed to the House of Lords by David Cameron in 2015. She went forward in 2020 and offered to supply PPE. And we know that the first contact was with Michael Gove, a very senior Conservative Party minister, who was like Minister for the Cabinet Office that basically oversaw all the procurement. It seems from the statements that they're making that.

• 12:30Speaker 05

  She feels like she's been sort of hung out to dry. She hasn't had any political support. And I think Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party criticised her as well after the judgment. So it seemed to me like a reaction to that, that I'm kind of done with politics if that's how it is.

• 12:49Matt Forde?

  Tell us more about the National Crime Agency investigation into Michelle Moan. What are they looking into?

• 12:54Speaker 05

  The National Crime Agency has said publicly that they launched an investigation in May 2021 into whether criminal offences were committed in the procurement of the contracts, which means in the process of PPE Medpro being awarded the contracts. And then in the documentary that you featured in the podcast that Mark Williams Thomas made, that was funded by PPE Medpro that went up on YouTube, I think he said in that or showed documents that showed that the National Crime Agency is investigating whether

• 13:34Speaker 05

  the particular offences are fraud by false representation. So making false statements in order to get contracts. I think there's conspiracy to defraud and also bribery. But the National Crime Agency says it's ongoing. So we're already four and a half years and that's it. That's the statement that the NCA makes. They don't give a timeframe for when or if there might be charges. And obviously Doug Barron and Michelle Moan have said throughout that they haven't committed any criminal offences. And, you know, that's their position.

• 14:12Alice Levine?

  We're obviously talking to you now, David, because there's been considerable developments since we made our series. One of those being that Moan and Barron have reportedly just bought a £10 million flat on America's billionaire island. Does that kind of fit the pattern that you've been tracking with your investigation into the PPE scandal?

• 14:33Speaker 05

  I must admit, I don't really follow that so much. I've read that they've bought an apartment in Florida, but I haven't really looked into it too much myself. Because to me, it's not core to these issues. PPE MedPro and the procurement of the PPE, whether the gowns were fit for purpose. You know, for me, that's the strong public interest. The public interest is like, it's a real thing. The public interest is, you know, it's recognised that if you're, if you're writing about injustice, if you're writing about inequality, that is in the public interest.

• 15:16Speaker 05

  And a distinction is made between the public interest and what is interesting to the public. That's not the same. That doesn't mean that, obviously, we're all, you know, there's so, so many things that we're interested in and we're really interested in, you know, why aren't Liverpool playing as well this season as last season? It's not to say that all of these things shouldn't be reported on. It's just that these issues are we're reporting on because they're in the public interest.

• 15:50Speaker 06

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• 16:20Speaker 07

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• 16:56Matt Forde?

  You've been investigating scandals for years, politics, football, corruption. Do you have an instinct for spotting a scandal when it's brewing?

• 17:05Speaker 05

  What do you think, Matt?

• 17:07Matt Forde?

  I think you probably have, yeah.

• 17:09Speaker 05

  You know, I've been a journalist for a long time and I've just found myself really from the beginning, being seriously concerned about injustice and inequality and areas where the structure of things needs investigating and holding to account. So, you know, like with football, I started writing about football at the start of being a journalist because I love football. And then I found myself very quickly writing about the wealth inequality between the Premier League and the rest of football and how supporters were being priced out and how the owners of clubs were floating on the stock market and making multi millions for themselves and how that didn't feel right as a football supporter.

• 17:52Speaker 05

  So then I got drawn into researching like the whole history of English football. And it took me into writing about the Hillsborough disaster because that was the stepping off point for, you know, the Premier League being formed and the commercial revolution in football and people making a lot of money at the top. But the Hillsborough families had suffered a grievous miscarriage of justice and had been left unable to rebuild their lives. And I ended up, have ended up, reporting on the Hillsborough disaster for 30 years. So I think it's just about the way that you perceive things and approach things. And but then you do need to really, really research things properly, obviously. And, you know, to make sure that you get the facts right and that you give people the opportunity

• 18:34Speaker 05

  to reply and, you know, do all the things that we need to do to be able to, you know, publish and report all these issues.

• 18:43Alice Levine?

  As you say, there's this through line between all of your work about injustice, about public interest, but also that the stories you cover are, you know, long game, they're slow burn stories. Do you disappear into them? Do these stories turn into an obligation?

• 19:00Speaker 05

  No, part of the reason, Alice, when you say it's slow burn is because, you know, justice took a very, very terribly long time to happen. So it's not you sort of slow burning and it is in a sense, slow burning and doing things gradually. Because you're covering something and reporting on something that is not being recognised by the establishment as an injustice that needs to be overturned.

• 19:24Alice Levine?

  And it must feel glacial to you.

• 19:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, and then just, and then the legal system turns really, really slowly. And even this PPE Medpro issue, I mean, it's, it's a consignment of PPE, isn't it? And there are contractual documents. It's, it's not that complicated really. But from when the government sued, which was late 2022, it's taken nearly three years for it to get through the system and be, there to be a judgment in the trial. Three years.

• 19:55Matt Forde?

  You're often investigating and dealing with people who've got real power and influence. Do they ever try and intimidate you?

• 20:02Speaker 05

  Now, when Michelle Moan said in that Laura Kunsberg interview, we lied to the media. I mean, they didn't lie directly to us. We got the letters from lawyers. So I don't know if intimidates the right word, is it, Matt? But, you know, that's telling you that you could be sued, the Guardian could be sued for reporting that they were essentially involved in the company. The thing about that is we have to research the facts. We wouldn't report on something if it wasn't right.

• 20:34Alice Levine?

  You must have had, as you said, a kind of moral and ethical draw to investigating this issue. But in a professional sense, is there something invigorating about realising this is not about a few bad actors, but that it is something systemic, that you are unearthing something much bigger?

• 20:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that's a very, very good point. And that also goes to this question of have they been made scapegoats? Well, we've always, and I've always from the beginning, reported it in the broader context that it was about the government responding to the pandemic, the government doing all this buying and spending multi, multi millions of pounds on P billions of pounds on PPE and setting up this VIP lane. Yeah, as you say, that's the broader canvas that it's about how our government responded to the pandemic. We need to learn lessons. We need to inquire about all these things that happened and learn lessons from them.

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• 23:49Matt Forde?

  Initially, Monon Barman denied any involvement with PPE Medpro. Why do you think they denied it for so long?

• 23:56Speaker 05

  I honestly don't know that. I don't know. And she gave the reason in the Laura Kunsberg interview that it was to protect her family. So that's it. Honestly, again, that's for them to say. I honestly don't know.

• 24:11Alice Levine?

  As you've said, they in themselves are of less interest to you, but they are a vehicle to get to the truth in part. So how did it feel when they were on that interview with Laura Kunsberg? And they were admitting some level of culpability, or at least involvement? Did that, did that kind of feel like a moment or a turning point? Even though they, they're kind of more useful in that bigger story?

• 24:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, but it is still an, don't get me wrong. It is still an extraordinary public interest story. To be honest, when they were then on that Laura Kunsberg program, essentially admitting all that after three years and admitting that they'd lied. No, you know, it's a very big moment. I mean, that kind of thing doesn't happen very often as.

• 25:05Speaker 05

  You two were well known and, you know, it's quite interesting for me that, you know, the way that you've done your, with your dramatic licence, the way that you've done me in the podcast and sort of being up in Yorkshire with dog and, you know, ink car. And then I've got to take a call in car and then I've got to send an email and all of that. Right. It was quite nice actually, because, you know, it's actually not that far off how it is. And then when they were on the Laura Kunsberg programme, I'm basically sitting at the same desk, on the same laptop, where I've done all the work, where I've had all the denials from them that they're involved, where we've had to go through all the processes of, we've got evidence that they are involved and we have to go through

• 25:48Speaker 05

  that and the money that was made. So to sort of see them on three years on and they're just telling Laura Kunsberg, yes, essentially that's all right and we lied. I actually find it quite hard to describe, to be honest. That's the kind of thing that just doesn't really happen very often, isn't it?

• 26:05Matt Forde?

  So as the story unraveled, did you think it was an isolated set of bad actors or a bigger system problem?

• 26:13Speaker 05

  I absolutely could see that it was a, it was the system. Bear in mind that there are different people and organisations who've uncovered all this at the time. So there's an organisation called the Good Law Project, which is a not-for-profit, that is a legal organisation that actually takes legal action quite often against the government. So their way of holding the government to account is to take legal action. And they were all over the procurement. And so I think the first revelation that there was this thing called the VIP lane was leaked, I think, to the Good Law Project. It was a Good Law Project, more than anyone, who would look at the companies and say, hmm, they seem

• 26:58Speaker 05

  to have a connection with, let's say, a Conservative Party peer, a member of the House of Lords. And then I, I looked at it and you can go on this website called Companies' House, which gives all the details of companies in this country and who the directors are and who the owners are. So I, I looked at that, I was like, hmm, those directors of this company, they do work for essentially Doug Barrowman's firm. And one of them did work for a company that was a Michel Mohn company.

• 27:28Speaker 05

  But that's in the context of this broader system that's been exposed, which is the massive amount of spending on PPE and the VIP lane. This is late 2020, before we realised quite how much PPE they'd bought that either was unusable or just wasn't used. And we're talking billions. I've reported on the bigger picture. I've not ever tried to say that PPE MedPro was the only company that had political connections or that ultimately provided PPE that wasn't usable.

• 28:02Alice Levine?

  A lot of our listeners will be listening to you talk about being an investigative journalist and will have this image of what that is, partly because we've painted a picture where you're walking the dog and, you know, typing by candlelight on your typewriter. If they have reached Yorkshire, I'm not sure. But what are your days filled with? And what is the hardest part, specifically of the PPE MedPro case? You know, what does it look like to be embarking on something like this?

• 28:31Speaker 05

  What I think that you captured in your dramatic licence of me in Woods with Dog getting a phone call in car is.

• 28:41Matt Forde?

  Highly accurate voice acting as well.

• 28:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, with your excellent impersonation of me, Matt. I think what you did capture, though, is, I don't want to say that it's solitary, because obviously, you know, you can be in the office with lots of people next to you and colleagues. And, you know, to some extent, every job's solitary. But I suppose, you know, in some ways, it's the luxury of time that you're given. You're given more time than news reporters who do have to turn a news story around on the day, whereas we're given time and expected to use that time to dig a bit deeper, research a bit further, and then hopefully, you know, find the facts that are in the public interest

• 29:26Speaker 05

  that are really important for people to understand and to report on them. And I think, I think you asked me what the hardest thing is about the job. And I think the hardest thing is to go that far and get to the bottom of things.

• 29:40Alice Levine?

  Do you think this sort of scandal could ever happen again?

• 29:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think it could definitely happen again. When this terrible emergency hit of this awful virus, you know, something that we all hope will never be repeated, we had to be locked down, kids had to be kept out of school for just about two years, we couldn't mix. Everybody recognizes, or I certainly recognize, that the government couldn't do what it normally does with public procurement and, you know, have competitive processes between companies, bids that last for weeks and weeks. I think I certainly recognize that they have to have some sort of emergency process. But for the emergency process to be, we're going to treat as most credible, we're getting deluged with offers of PPE.

• 30:29Speaker 05

  And the ones that we're going to treat as credible are the ones that are recommended by people with political connections, by ministers or MPs or civil servants. I mean, in the public inquiry, these organizations, Transparency International and the UK Anti-Corruption Coalition, they've done some incredible research on all of that. And they found that there's no other country that they could find. Every country had to have a way of prioritizing bids. There's no other country they can find that prioritized bids from politically connected people.

• 31:00Matt Forde?

  Makes you proud to be British.

• 31:03Speaker 05

  That surely makes you think it could happen again, yes, and lessons have to be learned. And that's one of the reasons why there's a whole public inquiry.

• 31:11Matt Forde?

  David, this has been superb. Thank you so much for joining us.

• 31:17Speaker 05

  Thanks very much.

• 31:18Alice Levine?

  Please don't spiral.

• 31:27Alice Levine?

  Thanks so much again to David. And I think I understand Michelle Moan a bit better now. I fully understand why David Kahn would be a thorn in her side.

• 31:36Matt Forde?

  The man is a nuisance.

• 31:38Alice Levine?

  Matt, what do you have for me in the next series, please?

• 31:42Matt Forde?

  Okay, two words: virgins, baby.

• 31:47Alice Levine?

  You've got my attention. Jesus? Christmas-themed scandal? Can we make it British?

• 31:53Matt Forde?

  No, this is another scandal. Not Bethlehem, but London in the 1920s. A glamorous, modern wife claims she's five months pregnant and still a virgin. And let me tell you, Alice, high society will whisper, the tabloids will salivate, and a courtroom prepares to decide the impossible truth.

• 32:12Alice Levine?

  You know I love a courtroom. Also, I have my own feelings on this, but I'll wait till the series begins. From Wondery and Samasdat Audio, this is the fourth and final episode in our series, Michelle Moan. British Scandal is hosted by me, Alice Levine.

• 32:27Matt Forde?

  And me, Matt Ford.

• 32:28Alice Levine?

  For Samasdat, our producer is Chica Ayers. Our assistant producer is Louise Mason. Our senior producers are Joe Sykes and Dashilis Itzina. Our engineer is Jai Williams. Executive producers for Wondery are Theodora LaLudis, Estelle Doyle, and Marshall Moore.

• 32:56Speaker 10

  Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia spent her life exposing powerful people. Then, in 2017, she was killed in a car bombing.

• 33:06Speaker 10

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• 33:50Speaker 10

  and by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.

• 33:55Speaker 11

  A trucker merges onto the I-10 in New Orleans. He checks his mirrors. The lane is clear. And then, boom. Impact. A pickup truck, seemingly out of nowhere, scrapes down the side of his 18-wheeler. Multiple passengers inside. One man flees the scene. And the driver of the pickup? He doesn't seem all that upset. It didn't feel like a regular accident, because it wasn't. Across the city, truckers are getting sideswiped, all on the same stretch of the same freeway. And behind many of the cases is one person. A Hollywood stunt woman turned personal injury lawyer, named Vanessa Moda. This podcast is a story about fake accidents that lead to real consequences,

• 34:37Speaker 11

  and a scheme that ends in betrayal and murder. Listen to Over My Dead Body: Operation Sideswipe wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app, or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.