A bankruptcy petition against Ugo Monye has been withdrawn after HM Revenue & Customs said it was unable to find him to serve it.
The extraordinary development emerged during a High Court hearing on Tuesday, more than two months since Telegraph Sport revealed the former England and British and Irish Lions wing was facing financial ruin, and almost four months since HMRC first filed a petition against him.
In proceedings before Judge Sally Barber, deputy bankruptcy registrar of the High Court, HMRC’s legal representative sought permission to withdraw its petition after saying it had been unable to serve papers on the 41-year-old.
Judge Barber responded: “You’ve been unable to serve it because you don’t have knowledge of a place of residence where he currently lives. Permission to withdraw the bankruptcy petition granted.”
HMRC declined to comment on why it would be unable to locate a man who appears frequently on television and radio as a pundit for the BBC and TNT Sports, including during the recent Six Nations, or on whether it planned to file a fresh petition. However, a source suggested it had served a petition to an out-of-date address.
Monye said in a statement: “I have been fully engaged with my financial advisors who in turn have been liaising directly with HMRC on this matter on my behalf. I am hopeful that the matter will be fully concluded imminently.”
News of his financial flight first broke in January, a year after the BBC axed A Question of Sport and more than 12 months after HMRC obtained a winding-up order against Monye’s “physical well-being” company Show Me The Monye.
A bankruptcy petition was lodged with the High Court on December 4, almost exactly a year after the liquidation of Monye’s firm, over the reported non-payment of nearly £200,000 in tax and social security.
The company’s last set of accounts, for the year ended June 30, 2022, showed it owed £108,562 in corporation tax and £72,967 in other tax and social security.
HMRC lodged a winding-up petition on August 1, 2023, with the winding-up order issued on December 6 of that year by chief insolvency and companies Judge Briggs.
That was followed a week later by the news A Question of Sport, the world’s longest-running television sports quiz, had been axed by the BBC two years into a controversial revamp featuring Monye and Sam Quek as captains and Paddy McGuinness.
Monye became the latest former England player to face bankruptcy after World Cup winners Lawrence Dallaglio and Phil Vickery endured a similar fate.
Dallaglio avoided going bust in 2023, although a report into his own liquidated company, Lawrence Dallaglio Limited, for the year ending October 2024 stated that he was still being chased for hundreds of thousands of pounds loaned to the firm.
Vickery saw a request to be made bankrupt granted in February last year after reportedly racking up debts to HMRC and others totalling six figures.
Monye retired from playing aged 31 in 2015 after spending his entire 13-year career with Harlequins.
In that time he helped them to their first Premiership title in 2012, while he also won 14 caps for England and two for the Lions, finishing top try-scorer on the latter’s 2009 tour to South Africa.
Shortly before retirement, he joined what was then BT Sport as a rugby analyst.
In 2021, he took part in the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing programme a week after it emerged that he had split from his wife of five years.
He told The Sun at the time: “We weren’t in a volatile relationship, we never hated each other and there was no third party. Forget the Strictly curse – it’s the Covid curse!”
A week after Strictly began, Monye was named one of the new captains on A Question of Sport following the BBC’s controversial dumping of veteran trio Sue Barker, Matt Dawson and Phil Tufnell.
A furious Barker, now 68, later questioned whether her age had played a part in the decision.
The two-year tenure of McGuinness, Monye and Quek saw ratings plunge from a high of four million in the final years of Barker’s reign to less than a million.
Monye, who earlier that year joined the Princess of Wales for a rugby skills session after becoming a “champion” in her childhood campaign, Shaping Up, also hit the headlines that November amid allegations he had been racially abused while working for TNT Sports at an Exeter Chiefs match.
Earlier this month, Angus Beukes, 32, was cleared at Exeter Magistrates’ Court of causing racially aggravated harassment, alarm or distress.
