Former Hammer has opened up
Former Hammer Lucas Neill has opened up about his financial and legal battle which saw him facing three years in jail over allegations he had hidden hid millions from creditors after being declared bankrupt.
The former West Ham captain who skippered Australia and starred at the 2006 and 2010 World Cups was acquitted in an English court on November 20 after facing charges that he didn’t declare the huge sum of money.
He earned around £60,000 per week at West Ham in 2007 but those earnings have now gone.
He told The Times that his ‘rock bottom’ came when he had to attend a meeting with an insolvency service in 2016.
It was the realisation that after 20 years of a football career and all this hard work, I’ve got nothing to show for it,’ he said.
Neill is now warning other footballers to be wary of the financial advice they receive after sinking a fortune into a tax scheme that was meant to give him large tax breaks for investing in British movies, according to The Times
The scheme’s failure saw him chased by the taxman over a £607,000 debt, and a string of losses on property deals left him flat broke.
Neill faced the jail time because almost £3.17million he received for the sale of a 144-acre property was transferred to his offshore trust but said he had no idea money the came to him because he mistakenly believed the property had already been repossessed.
‘My head was a mess. I could barely say sentences,’ he recalled.
‘I had just written out the whole tragedy of my life, and I was going to face my happy, innocent schoolchildren on a school pick-up – a new school, because we could no longer afford to pay for school fees for their old school.’
‘There were some really humiliating moments, like at 7.55am on a school morning, my kids answer the door to bailiffs trying to claim a council tax bill for £400 ‘ he told the Times
‘I don’t care about fame or luxury,’ he said.
‘I Just want to survive with my family and that’s it.’