Michelle Mone‘s luxury Belgravia London townhouse has been purchased by a racing driver whose father is worth £525 million, it was revealed today.
The six-bedroom property was purchased for £5 million less than the £23m asking price by 20-year-old Freddie Tomlinson.
His father, Lawrence Tomlinson, lent him the £17.8 million used to purchase the house, having made his fortune through care homes and racing cars.
Tomlinson purchased the property in 2023 but details of the sale have only just emerged, a week after a judge ruled that a company linked to Baroness Mone which had access to the government’s Covid ‘VIP PPE lane’ must repay £122 million.
Included in the deal was the 6,000 square-foot townhouse and an adjoining mews house.
Documents show Tomlinson attained the property from two companies listed in the British Virgin Isles.
These firms had bought the house for £11 million in 2015, before Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman spent a considerable sum refurbishing it.
This included installing an indoor pool and home cinema, it is understood.
Michelle Mone’s luxury Belgravia London townhouse has been purchased by a racing driver whose father is worth £525 million, it was revealed today (Pictured: Baroness Mone standing in front of the property)
Freddie Tomlinson, 20, was today revealed to be the new owner of Michelle Mone’s Belgravia pad
Lawrence Tomlinson, a multi-millionaire estimated to be worth £525 million, lent his son the £18 million for the property purchase, documents show
Voirrey Coole, a former director of PPE Medpro – the firm which supplied botched equipment to the government during the pandemic – acted on behalf of the British Virgin Island firms during the sale, documents show.
The house itself had previously been included on a list of frozen assets and was raided during the fraud investigation into PPE Medpro by the National Crime Agency in 2022.
Its new owner is a racing driver who competes for his father’s family-owned team Ginetta.
Baroness Mone, 53, a Tory peer who rose to fame as the creator of the Ultimo bra company, has come under public scrutiny since the pandemic over the PPE equipment her husband Doug Barrowman’s firm PPE Medpro supplied.
A criminal investigation and a House of Lords inquiry are both ongoing.
The company won a lucrative contract to supply 25 million surgical gowns, allegedly after improper lobbying of the Government by the Baroness, without declaring an interest.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) sued, claiming the gowns were not sterile.
In her 87-page ruling, Mrs Justice Cockerill said the gowns ‘were not, contractually speaking, sterile, or properly validated as being sterile’.
The house eventually sold for £18m, £5m less than the original asking price of £23m
One of the six-bedrooms in the couple’s former Regency home
It boasts a cinema, media room, gym, swimming pool and spa amenities, such as a jacuzzi and steam room
The home underwent ‘extensive’ renovations after it was acquired in 2011
The Belgravia home’s living room had original artwork on the wall depicting Lady Mone’s husband Doug Barrowman (centre) above the sofa next to an image of one of her heroines, Marilyn Monroe (far right)
She said: ‘That means that they could not be used as sterile gowns in the NHS or elsewhere.’
It was ruled that the firm must repay the £122 million spent by the government on the products, although Judge Cockerill did not rule it must pay a further claim of £8 million over storage of the PPE.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves welcomed last week’s judgment, saying: ‘We want our money back. We are getting our money back. And it will go where it belongs – in our schools, NHS and communities.’
But Mr Barrowman blasted the judgment as a ‘travesty of justice’.
He said: ‘Today, a travesty of justice took place following the judgment of Lady Justice Cockerill.
‘She gave the DHSC (Department of Health and Social Care) an Establishment win despite the mountain of evidence in court against such a judgment.
‘Her judgment bears little resemblance to what actually took place during the month-long trial, where PPE Medpro convincingly demonstrated that its gowns were sterile.
‘This judgment is a whitewash of the facts and shows that justice was being seen to be done, where the outcome was always certain for the DHSC and the Government. This case was simply too big for the Government to lose.’
Before the verdict, Baroness Mone also posted on social media and accused the Government was ‘scapegoating’ her and her husband Doug Barrowman.
She said: ‘This case was never about gowns or money. It has always been about politics and blame-shifting, a way to cover up the Government’s disastrous £10 billion PPE write-off.
‘Doug and I have been deliberately scapegoated and vilified in an orchestrated campaign designed to distract from catastrophic mismanagement of PPE procurement.
‘The Government decided to make us the poster couple for the PPE scandal, a convenient distraction to take the blame off them.’
There are calls for her to be stripped of her peerage over the matter.
