Michelle Mone
The Baroness Mone | |
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Mone in 2013 | |
| Member of the House of Lords | |
| Life peerage 30 September 2015 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Michelle Georgina Allan 8 October 1971 Glasgow, Scotland |
| Party | Independent |
| Other political affiliations |
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| Spouses |
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| Occupation | |
| Known for | Founder of Ultimo |
Michelle Georgina Mone, Baroness Mone, OBE (née Allan; born 8 October 1971) is a Scottish businesswoman and life peer. She has set up several businesses, including MJM International Ltd in 1996 and the lingerie company Ultimo along with her then husband Michael Mone. Other ventures include naturopathic 'weight-loss' pills, a fake tan product via Ultimo Beauty, overseas residential development and cryptocurrency. Mone became a Conservative life peer in 2015.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mone's husband's company, PPE Medpro, was awarded £200 million of contracts to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) by the UK government. The company made a profit of £60 million and some of the products they provided were defective and went unused. From 2020 to 2023, Mone vehemently denied that she or her husband had any involvement with the contracts. In January 2022, the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards and National Crime Agency launched investigations into Mone's links to the contracts. Mone announced in December that year that she was taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords "to clear her name" amid the allegations. Shortly afterwards the UK government announced plans to sue PPE Medpro for £122 million plus costs over the defective items.
In December 2023, Mone disclosed that she had been involved with PPE Medpro and claimed she had previously denied it to protect her family. In February 2024, a leak revealed that five months prior to £29 million of PPE Medpro's profits being transferred into a trust that Mone would benefit from, she assured the government that she would not gain "any financial benefit whatsoever", and that there were "no conflicts whatsoever" with regard to the company she had recommended to the government.