MICHELLE Mone has been accused of using of her taxpayer funded office in the House of Lords to further her own business empire.
It follows revelations in the Financial Times, detailing some of the issues her new cryptocurrency venture EQUI is facing.
The paper revealed that parliamentary email accounts had been used to respond to questions from journalists.
There were also questions over why the venture – which raised £7m from investors, far below its £80m target – was not listed on Mone’s register of interests in its own right.
An SNP spokesman said the Tory needs to come clean: “These shady details bring to light questionable conduct from Baroness Michelle Mone, and fall short of the openness and transparency required from individuals in privileged positions in public office,” he said.
“It is completely unclear why an enquiry directed to a business received a reply from her parliamentary account. Baroness Mone must now make clear why she continues to use parliamentary resources to further her business – one which does not seem to appear on her register of interests.”
When The National asked Mone’s press office why parliamentary email accounts were being used to respond to questions about EQUI, they replied: “Her team in her private office and House of Lords team reply to her emails as they come through.”
However, Mone’s House of Lords team seems to consist of just one person, Andrew Whitby-Collins.
Whitby-Collins, who used to work for Iain Duncan Smith, and who is a former head of candidate development for the Tory party, is also currently the director of Auxilium Advisers, a firm providing “philanthropy advice to individuals, families and companies”.
According to the staff register of interest on the House of Lords website, Whitby-Collins provides parliamentary assistance to Mone and another Tory Peer, Baroness Morris. He doesn’t list any of Mone’s businesses.
The National also asked Mone’s press office why EQUI was not listed on her own register.
Her spokesperson told us we were wrong, as it was registered.
However, the House of Lords then told us Mone had “not registered her interest in EQUI explicitly.”
They added, however, that it may be that it’s a subsidiary of one of the companies that she has registered, and “is covered in that way”.
When we put that to the peer’s press person, they told us that EQUI was registered under Dellal Ltd, which does appears on the register.
Dellal appears to be a venture capital company taken over in January this year by Mone’s partner, Doug Barrowman.
Mone’s spokesperson said: “Even though the business hasn’t started trading as yet, Baroness Mone decided to register this company much earlier than she is required to do so.
The spokesperson added: “Baroness Mone has always remained transparent in her duties as a member of The House of Lords.
“Her team in her private office deal with all of her enquiries into all of her mail-boxes and nothing is ever compromised.”
“The SNP should really stop this blatant constant attack on Baroness Mone who is a hard working self-made entrepreneur and mother and concentrate on their own efforts that taxpayers pay them to do.”
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