UK Edition
David Beckham 'has given up hope of a knighthood in the near future'
David Beckham has given up hope of being knighted in the near future in the wake of the furore over his leaked emails, friends have said.
The former England captain accepts he may have to wait until his 50s before the dust has settled enough for him to stand any chance of being considered by the honours committee.
Beckham, 41, was “red flagged” by HM Revenue & Customs when his name was put forward for a knighthood in 2013, because he had invested in a scheme that HMRC said amounted to tax avoidance.
His response - contained in emails that were published after they were allegedly hacked - was to describe the honours committee as “unappreciative ****s”.
Beckham hopes he will be removed from the HMRC blacklist as the result of court action by investment firm Ingenious Media, which has always maintained that Beckham and others were investing in a legal, legitimate scheme that had been approved by the government.
Whilst that would remove the main hurdle to him becoming a knight, he knows that his reputation has been badly dented and that it will take time to repair the damage.
A source close to Beckham said: “He is passionate about his country and like anyone else, the ultimate accolade would be a knighthood, but he doesn’t spend his every waking hour thinking about knighthoods.
“He would love to have had it, but this idea that he did his charity work to try to get knighted is nonsense, it’s just scandalous to suggest that.
“There were maybe three emails in which he vented his frustration in amongst hundreds of thousands of emails that were hacked, so no, it’s not all he thinks about.
“Hopefully the tax issue is going to be cleared up in court, but he knows they are not going to be rushing in the current climate to give him a knighthood.”
Beckham is understood to have invested between £1m-£2m in Ingenious, which backed the British film industry while enabling members to write off any losses against their other income.
After HMRC sent tax demands to members of the scheme, saying it had amounted to tax avoidance, Ingenious challenged the decision in court, arguing that the Blair and Brown governments had approved the investment scheme.
Last October a tax tribunal ordered HMRC to reduce its tax demands on members of the scheme.
Ingenious is now reflecting on what it calls a “complex” decision before deciding whether to launch a further appeal in an attempt to have the tax demands reduced to zero.
A spokesman for the firm said: “Our position has always been that these were completely bona fide financial products.
“No announcement has yet been made on whether we will appeal against the tribunal’s decision.”
Emails between Beckham and his long-time publicist Simon Oliveira are alleged to have been hacked from the servers of Mr Oliveira’s sports agency Doyen Sports, based in Portugal.
They were published by the Football Leaks website, which also leaked emails from other sports agencies around Europe.
Police in Portugal, Spain, Germany, Hungary and the UK are now understood to be investigating the alleged hack.
Doyen Sports also employed the private investigation firm Marclay Associates, founded by former intelligence officers, after it reported the matter to Portuguese police at the end of 2015.
The firm claims it was blackmailed by a hacker calling himself Artem Lobusov who demanded up to £1million to destroy the emails.