Bradley Wiggins, the winner of the 2012 Tour de France, is threatened, according to the English site cyclingweekly.com, with personal bankruptcy. The liquidators of his company revealed that a debt of almost a million pounds sterling (1.14 million euros) against him had still not been paid. And the Englishman also risks losing the rights to use the brands of his own name, “Wiggins” and “Wiggo” which have been put up for sale.
Since July 2020, Bradley Wiggins, crippled by debt, has opted for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) procedure in order to find a financial agreement and repay his creditors. Wiggins Rights Limited, the company which ran much of ex-Team Skye rider’s business went into liquidation in September 2020.
But recently liquidators revealed they have yet to receive a single penny of the £979,953 (€1.121 million) claimed from Wiggins in 2022, partly to repay an unpaid administrator loan. They said they expected to receive just 600,695 pounds from Wiggins, (687,000 euros) mainly from the sale of a property in Spain.
But they also revealed that Wiggins’ AVI supervisor had issued a “notice of violation” of the terms of his agreement by Wiggins. Which could then lead to personal bankruptcy of the latter. The liquidators also decided, to recover some money, to sell the rights to the brands “Bradley Wiggins”, “Wiggins” and “Wiggo”, all owned by the company in liquidation.
When he was contacted again by these liquidators, Wiggins, according to the latter, explained that his financial difficulties “had lasted for several years now and that he did not see when they could end”. Adding that “all of this can be explained by professional negligence on the part of people who left a pile of things with my name marked on them (…) This happens to many athletes and will consequently lead to a certain number of legal claims from my lawyers, left and right. »
In total, the claims presented by the liquidators would amount to more than 750,000 pounds sterling (858,000 euros). In December 2020, shortly after the liquidation of his companies, a spokesperson for the champion said that Wiggins’ involvement in his companies was “not daily” and that “it in no way affects personal solvency by Bradley.” A priori, this is no longer the case today.
