sport news Craig Bellamy says battle against bankruptcy is 'like being on Death Row' trends now
All of it is there on one page. It is hidden but it is there, shouting in anguish above the legal jargon. The millions he earned in the Premier League wage explosion of the Noughties; the monopoly money he got at Newcastle United and West Ham and Manchester City, the watch collection that was his only real extravagance; his absurd generosity, the lengths he went to for others; the injuries he suffered; the pain he went through. The money he earned and how dearly it has cost him.
It is there on that page, hidden but howling: the school he set up in Sierra Leone, the funerals of strangers he paid for in Cardiff, the kid from a favela whose education he bankrolled in Rio de Janeiro, his divorce settlement, the friends he indulged, the friends who betrayed him, the advisers who misled him and cheated him, the loss of his family home, Sant-Y-Nyll, in St Brides-super-Ely, the £1,398,071.20 he owes to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. All there, all reduced to stark lines of black and white in a one-page document.
‘In the High Court of Justice, Business and Property Courts of England and Wales,’ it says at the top of that page, ‘Insolvency and Companies list (ChD). Insolvency and Companies Court Judge Jones, 27 March 2023, in the matter of Craig Douglas Bellamy, and in the matter of the Insolvency Act 1986, upon the petition of HMRC, creditor of the above-named debtor, presented to this court on 03 February, 2023…it is ordered that Craig Douglas Bellamy be adjudged bankrupt.’
Bellamy stares at the page in the modest flat where he lives in north Manchester. He does not own the flat. He cannot own it. It is rented for him by Burnley, the Championship club where he is assistant coach to Vincent Kompany.
He does not own any property any more. He does not own a car. He cannot own a car. He is now, officially, a bankrupt and if there is some relief in that fact being public, he is also keen that his situation acts as a warning to today’s young footballers, who earn even more than he did and who have unscrupulous hucksters and ruthless opportunists circling them just as they once circled him.
Burnley assistant Craig Bellamy says his battle against bankruptcy is 'like being on Death Row'
Bellamy (right) has no house, no car or mortgage after losing everything, with his financial ruin the result of a series of failed investments made on his behalf on a number of properties
‘I have been living the last five or six years on Death Row,’ says Bellamy, ‘just waiting for someone to put me out. I have been waiting for the cell door to open and someone to say: “Today’s the day”. It’s like the feeling of not being able to look forward to anything. All the money I’ve earned, I can’t get a mortgage. Financially, I have no future. The hurt of that. I can’t own anything. Everything’s gone.
‘My life has been on hold. I’m not a tax dodger but I have been very naive and the HMRC have been pursuing me for unpaid tax for some time. Everything I have had has been taken from me. If you get the wrong people advising you, it all haemorrhages, it all dwindles. It has got to the point where bankruptcy is a relief. It means I can just live again.
‘I know some people will probably think I have squandered all my money on drinking or gambling or drugs. I haven’t. I can go quiet where you won’t hear from me but I won’t be down the pub. I have never touched drugs since I was a young kid. I don’t gamble. I have never gambled. It doesn’t make any sense to me. But I have gambled on people unfortunately.’
Bellamy’s financial ruin is the result of a series of spectacular failed investments made on his behalf in properties on the Albert Embankment in London, a building project in Cefn Coed Road in Cardiff, a wine bar and steakhouse in Penarth Marina called Pier 64 and a film partnership-tax deferral scheme that was targeted by HMRC and was responsible for plunging numerous other footballers and celebrities into financial trouble.
Some of it was also the product of plain bad luck and chaos. A collection of expensive watches that he bought to identify landmarks in his life might have been considered assets but only one remains. Four of them are understood to be in the possession of a jeweller but cannot be recovered because the business went into liquidation in 2020 and the jeweller has entered into a police witness protection scheme and is unable to be contacted.
Bellamy played for clubs including Liverpool, Manchester City and Newcastle during his career
Though he didn't want to drink or bet during his career, but insists he'd have 'felt better' if he lost his money this way
At least one of Bellamy’s former advisers became the subject of a police investigation when suspicions were raised about the management of the ex-Wales international’s finances, about forged signatures, about a man impersonating him in a conversation relating to a loan, about arrangements concerning properties that were mortgaged to the hilt, about the sale of some of those properties and the non-completion of several of his scheduled tax returns. Bellamy was subsequently told that, after three years of that police investigation, charges were not to be brought against the people he blamed for his plight because it was not deemed in the public interest to do so.
‘I want this to be a warning to other players,’ says Bellamy. ‘Check everything, make sure the people advising you are regulated. If they are not regulated, it’s the Wild West. Get your stuff audited by independent people, the equivalent of getting a second opinion. I was brought up in a generation of footballers where everything was done for you. Every bill. Wherever I was, the
