Baroness Mone’s £250 million Dubai property project, hailed as the first major development to be sold using bitcoin, was never actually built, it has emerged.
Mone, who was made a peer in 2015 for services to business, announced proposals to build two 40-floor skyscrapers complete with shopping centre and sports facilities.
With her husband, Doug Barrowman, Mone announced in 2017 that the properties would be available to buy for virtual currency rather than cash.
Baroness Mone told an American news network in 2017 that she would not be involved with the project if it were perceived as “dodgy”
STEFAN ROUSSEAU/WPA/GETTY IMAGES
However, work on the site has been abandoned, despite claims from Mone and Barrowman that buyers had already invested in flats using cryptocurrency.
“I’m a baroness so I wouldn’t be getting involved in it if it was a kind of ‘dodgy’ industry,” Mone
told an American news network at the time.
Yet, the Mail on Sunday reports, Dubai government records show that the couple’s Aston Plaza and Residences, located in the Science Park district of the city, were never built. A property inspection report carried out by the Dubai Real Estate Regulatory Agency confirmed that the project started but was later “cancelled” at just 32 per cent completion.
Representatives for Mone and her husband, Doug Barrowman, said that no one lost any money and all deposits were held in escrow, in accordance with the law in Dubai
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Pictures taken by inspectors who visited the site in January 2018 show the concrete shell of one tower abandoned in the middle of the desert. Promotional mock-ups on the project’s website showed sleek, minimalist homes set across two glass tower blocks.
According to the development’s website, 150 apartments were available to buy directly from the developers using bitcoin, a digital currency.
It added: “The highly anticipated selection of 1,133 studio, one and two bedroom apartments, is due for completion in summer 2019. Apartments offer floor-to-ceiling windows with unobstructed views of the Dubai Hills and the iconic city skyline.”
The project was sold on to a Dubai-based developer.
Representatives for Mone and Barrowman said that no one lost any money and all deposits were held in escrow, in accordance with the law in Dubai.
In the UK the Scottish business couple are at the centre of an anti-corruption inquiry connected to PPE that a company led by Barrowman supplied to the government
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In the UK the Scottish business couple are at the centre of an anti-corruption inquiry connected to the coronavirus pandemic which has led to £75 million of their assets being frozen by the National Crime Agency.
Investigators are focused on PPE Medpro, a company led by Barrowman, which was placed in a VIP priority lane for government personal protective equipment contracts worth £203 million of taxpayers’ money after a recommendation by Mone.
The Department of Health and Social Care is suing PPE Medpro over claims that surgical gowns supplied by the firm were not fit for use. The government told the High Court in London recently that the company should pay back more than £121 million for breaching a Covid contract for 25 million of the gowns.
