Sir Bradley Wiggins’ unpaid debts double to almost £2 million, as five-time Olympic champion’s bankruptcy woes continue

Well, according to an interview he gave in August, "The top company took the biggest hits when it ran up a debt of nearly one and a half million, which got given to me as a director's loan. But I wasn't the director at the time and I had to be made a director to take the loan without my knowledge. I was still riding my bike at the time. So it's a complete mess and I wasn't aware of this mess until I was deep into retirement."

Whether you believe him or not is a different matter of course but...

I don't believe him. Wiggins Rights Ltd is the top company (it owns 101 Ride Ltd, which owns New Team Ride Ltd). It's owned 98% by Brad, 1% by his wife and 1% by his mum.

Perhaps he was made a director without his consent, but the other directors were his wife and mother and one of them would have had to sign the forms to make him a director. And anyway, he's not disputing that he took the loan, so why is it relevant that he was made a director?

His version is that the loan wasn't to him, in a personal capacity, but was really a way of shuttling money from one of the companies to another, to cover deficits that it shouldn't have had and he wasn't aware of.

Rather than lending money directly from one company to another? Given that loaning the money to Brad to loan into another company would result in a tax charge of 32.5% of the outstanding loan, this is highly unlikely.

Depends. If they weren't much interested in protecting his financial affairs in the first place, they probably wouldn't be particularly concerned about adding extra tax liability to the pile either.

So his advisers were trying to move funds around to cover losses, but in a way that needlessly created additional liabilities? It would have been such a convoluted way of doing things, and more importantly it's not what that accounts of the other companies show.

Top sports people have to focus on their sport, or they won't be the top of their sport. That they focus intensively on their sport does not give others the right to rip them off.

I am surprised there is never any accountability for all these advisors and (esp.) accountants. There should be really, somehow. If not possible for the likes of Wiggins, etc., something to bring in for the future.

I agree, spending most of the year flying around the continent and further afield whilst participating in one of the world's most exhausting and high intensity sports doesn't leave much time for poring over the minutiae of tax returns. What one can't help thinking is that a lot of these top sports people shouldn't actually bother with all these advisors and accountants; one of the few non-property millionaires of my acquaintance simply has all his incomings paid into a pretty standard bank account (albeit at Coutts, I believe) and pays his necessary outgoings from there as well. He reckons he's probably missing out on the opportunity to increase his wealth by about 10% per year but is happy because there is zero chance of him losing it. It nearly always seems to be the case when sports people get into financial difficulty that they were persuaded to put money into various get rich quick or tax avoidance schemes which then came a cropper. If Wiggins had just stuck to putting his £17 million or whatever it was into a reputable deposit account, he'd probably have most of it still there today.

Rendel Harris wrote:

It nearly always seems to be the case when sports people get into financial difficulty that they were persuaded to put money into various get rich quick or tax avoidance schemes which then came a cropper.

Well, that or gambling. Though arguably that's a fine distinction.

It happens in music a fair bit too and has done for years. But clearly some have the nous for it - I remember hearing Robbie Fowler and Steve Mcmanam having massive residential property holdings and then you've got Gary Neville doing the same thing on the commercial property side.

Arguably sticking it in a bank account is bad.

But I have had family try to get me involved in some property investments... End up pointing out the return in the area isn't actually that good and has massive risks; I get nearly as much investing in a s&p500 tracker - sure in theory shares can lose money; But IIRC there is no 10 year period where the s&p500 has EVER lost money - yes, seriously, at the lowest point in the last financial crisis (which it recovered most of within about 6 hours) it was STILL up compared to 10 years earlier. And with the ability to wait a few weeks to pull money out, s&p500 trackers beat inflation relatively reliably; Effectively computerised tracker funds match the market average with tiny fees, which matches the economy; Sure, a skilled investor can beat it; But as a busy amateur without the time to spend, the best thing I can do is shove the money in a tracker and not look at it for 10 years...

no one to blame but him Always look at your money It your money that you work for.

Mybike wrote:

no one to blame but him Always look at your money It your money that you work for.

Well, I don't have any insight into how all consuming being a professional cyclist is and so how much you have to put your faith in your advisors, nor do I know whether anyone whom he trusted has ripped Bradley off or even stolen from him, so I'm afraid I can't judge him as you seem to be able to do.