Barrowman's seven mysterious "shadow companies" - more evidence of fraud
Barrowman's notorious PPE contract was in the name of PPE Medpro Limited, a UK company. The company has a "shadow" - there's an identically named Isle of Man company controlled by Barrowman. This is highly unusual - and we've found six other Barrowman businesses with identically named offshore "shadow companies". In one case, involving Barrowman's Smartpay business, there's evidence that the "shadow" was used to trick third parties into thinking that they were dealing with a UK company, when they were actually contracting with an offshore company. And Smartpay admitted to a tax tribunal that this was the purpose of the arrangement. We believe there are grounds for a criminal investigation into whether Smartpay committed fraud.
And this all raises the question whether PPE Medpro used a similar tactic to trick the Government into thinking they were dealing with a UK company, when they were actually contracting with an offshore company. That could explain how the £65m profit from the sale of PPE to the Government ended up untaxed and offshore. Barrowman doesn't deny the Smartpay "trick", but does deny misleading the Government.