Michelle Mone’s Algarve villa listing disappeared hours after MailOnline revealed it was on the market

Mystery surrounds Michelle Mone’s ‘for sale’ villa in the Algarve after an estate agent’s listing for the £8m property disappeared hours after we revealed it was on the market.

Leading estate agency QP Savills was offering Mone’s six-bedroom hideaway to prospective buyers this week as a luxury home that had “just come on the market”.

MailOnline discovered the property listing and confirmed that it was being promoted off the market weeks after fellow Tory was photographed enjoying golf and picnic lunches during a break in the sun with husband Doug Barrowman as they struggle to clean up their name amid a £200m PPE scandal. .

And hours after we reported that the couple were trying to sell the villa they bought less than a year ago, and just three months after police raided their homes to investigate the PPE deal, the link to the listing for sale had missing.

A Mone spokesman insisted it was not for sale.

The estate agent confirmed the property was not for sale and blamed a “computer glitch” for the listing.

A source close to Mone said he had spoken to an estate agent when he visited Portugal with Barrowman last week, but insisted the estate agent should not have listed the villa on his website.

A spokesperson for Baroness Mone and her husband insisted after seeing the Mail Online article: ‘The property referred to is not for sale. The owners are taking legal action against the estate agents in Portugal.

A spokesman for QP Savills at the exclusive Quinta do Lago complex where the villa is located, said: ‘This property is not for sale as listed. There was an IT problem Friday night with our system and that property was mistakenly online for a short period of time until the error was realized.’

His comments about the ‘IT hiccup’ came after colleagues confirmed earlier in the week that the villa was for sale before revealing that it was a very recent acquisition and one of the properties kept off the website. of the company

Mone, 51, and Barrowman, 58, bought the mansion last July for just under £7m through an offshore company.

The bra mogul was photographed walking her three dogs near the property earlier this month after arriving on a private jet with her husband of 58 years.

Barrowman was photographed golfing in the sun and the couple were also seen relaxing at local restaurants.

They enjoyed their downtime as Michelle, who made her fortune with lingerie firm Ultimo, continued to be investigated by the National Crime Agency as part of a fraud investigation into a Covid supply company she recommended to ministers.

The couple’s £20m London home and Isle of Man property, part of a property empire that also includes a £40m Caribbean home, was raided last April by NCA agents. as part of the investigation.

Lady Mone is also under investigation by the House of Lords Standards Commissioners for her alleged links to PPE Medpro.

She is accused of breaching the Lords Code of Conduct by failing to declare an interest in the company and lobbying it to win big deals to provide surgical gowns and face masks during the Covid pandemic.

PPE Medpro, set up by Anthony Page, who has publicly documented connections to businesses run by Mone and her husband, is being sued for more than £130m by the Department of Health for claiming the NHS would not be able to wear their gowns.

Both the couple, who allegedly received tens of millions of pounds in profits from PPE Medpro through offshore trusts before buying their Algarve home, and PPE Medpro deny any wrongdoing.

Mone said last December that he was taking a “leave of absence” from the House of Lords “to clear his name of the allegations that have been unjustly leveled.”

The luxurious sun pad that she and her husband insist they are not trying to sell and should never have been marketed was described as a “luxury villa in a prime location” before the property listing disappeared.

The 5,400-square-foot, three-story mansion, which features five bathrooms, six bedrooms, and a large pool and outdoor barbecue area, sits on a 21,500-square-foot parcel.

The house has a beautiful staircase suspended between the ground floor above the basement and the upper floor with two suites, including a master suite that opens onto a private terrace with ‘golf views’.

An old description of the property written by another real estate agency before they bought it last July enthused: “This magnificent villa is surrounded by a private garden that blends naturally with the beauty of the surrounding landscape” and goes on to describe the house as “incomparable”. ‘

She also highlighted the large bathroom upstairs with ‘his and her sinks’ and a storage room downstairs which she says can be converted into a cinema room or study.

The villa had already been fully renovated before Mone and her husband bought it and it is believed that they used it sparingly.

Earlier this month, a reporter who owned the property, registered to a company in the US tax haven of Delaware, asked Baroness Mone: ‘Nothing is my property. Everything is owned by my husband.

Quinta do Lago is listed as the most prestigious area in Portugal and one of the best locations to live in Europe. It was inaugurated in the 1970s with a 27-hole golf course in an area of ​​550 hectares divided into high-end residences.

There are currently five golf courses surrounded by properties valued between £3.5m and £14m.

Mone, from Glasgow’s East End, was made a life partner in 2015 by then-Prime Minister David Cameron and made the government’s business czar.

She has been in the spotlight since news broke that she recommended PPE Medpro to the government’s ‘VIP lane’ for Covid contracts before the company was formed.

Barrowman faces a separate trial later this year in Spain along with six other Britons for alleged tax evasion and misappropriation following the purchase of a cable factory in northern Spain.

The Scotsman insists he has not committed any crime and will fight the prosecution’s demand that he should be jailed for five and a half years if convicted on both counts.