Former Socceroos captain Lucas Neill’s fall from $40m playing career to bankruptcy, jail threat revealed

Former Socceroos captain Lucas Neill has revealed he spent years fighting to avoid being jailed during a devastating financial battle where he lived in darkness and couldn’t afford a mobile phone.

Lucas Neill.

Former Socceroos captain Lucas Neill has revealed his devastating financial battle, having declared bankruptcy in 2016, and how he spent the last seven years fighting to avoid a three-year jail term after a series of financial investments turned sour costing him every cent from his $40m career.

At the peak of Neill’s career he was the captain of Australia and West Ham in the English Premier League, pocketing $75,000 a week and driving a Ferrari with investment properties around England.

But a series of events including the 2008 global financial crisis and defaulting on a property loan in 2015 left the now 45-year-old locked in a seven-year fight with insolvency investigators to the point where he had to take his children out of private school, move into rented accommodation, lived in darkness after being unable to pay the electricity bill and was unable to even enter into a mobile phone contract.

Lucas Neill playing for West Ham in 2008.

His only income was his $1723 a month football pension, while his beauty therapist wife became the breadwinner.

Last Monday a jury at Preston Crown Court acquitted him of charges of failing to declare money, after the HMRC accused him of hiding more than $3.83m from an offshore investment property he thought had been repossessed and he didn’t know he still had.

“I’ve won my freedom, but I feel like I’ve lost in life,” Neill told The Times.

“I feel like I didn’t protect my family … and that hurts. I let my family down.

“There were some really humiliating moments … like at 7.55am on a school morning, my kids answer the door to bailiffs trying claim a council tax bill for ($750).”

Lucas Neill takes a penalty for Blackburn Rovers.

Neill’s dramas started when he was advised to put money into a scheme that would invest in British films and deliver enormous tax breaks.

He was one of several star footballers who fell victim to the schemes when they failed and were forced to pay back tens of thousands of dollars to the taxman.

“People say they want to advise you. Help you. People just constantly want to take a tiny slice out of you,” he said.

After the 2008 crash Neill was told he owed $765,000 and had to sell seven or eight properties, losing money on each, just to pay that debt.

In 2006 he had bought a barn near Newcastle, planning to develop it into 14 properties, then paid an extra $1.5m for 144 acres beside it which was held in an offshore trust.

In 2015 he defaulted on the loan and the bank sold the barn for just $241,000 – leaving him with a $1.4m bill once fees were added.

He declared bankruptcy the next year.

Lucas Neill declared bankruptcy in 2016. Picture: Gregg Porteous

“People couldn’t believe it, but I had nothing left” he said.

“That was my rock bottom. 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.”

Neill didn’t declare the 144 acres among his assets when meeting with Insolvency experts, as he thought the bank had already repossessed the property and it was worthless to him.

But the company continued to investigate and found a lender had sold the 144 acres for twice the original sum and settled the remaining $3.83m into Neill’s offshore trust.

Neill claims he never knew that but the Insolvency Service accused him of hiding the money and charged him with failing to disclose. He was acquitted by a jury last week. The offshore funds remain unfound.

Neill, who now works as a project manager in a digital firm and coaching women’s football, plans to try and find out what has happened to those offshore funds.

“I don’t care about fame, or luxury. I just want to survive with my family and that’s it,” he said.

“We have our own definition of happiness.”

His defence lawyer, Joseph Kotrie Monson of Mary Monson Solicitors said there was no way Neill would deliberately hide the money.

“Why would somebody ever put their family through all the pressure of bankruptcy, if they knew they had enough money in a bank account to pay off the debt and still have a million left over?” Kotrie-Monson told The Times.

Read the full story via The Times here

Originally published as Former Socceroos captain Lucas Neill’s fall from $40m playing career to bankruptcy, jail threat revealed