Barry Ferguson has been declared bankrupt by Her Majesty.
Despite a dozen years of high earnings the former Rangers skipper owes HMRC just over £1.4m.
As well as his football income Ferguson has enjoyed lucrative media work with BBC Scotland and the Daily Record but today filed for bankruptcy.
According to a report in The Sun: “He applied for his own bankruptcy after running up debts of £1,425,633 and it was approved by the Accountant In Bankruptcy, Scotland’s insolvency service, earlier this month.
“A bankruptcy trustee, Maureen Leslie of Glasgow-based insolvency specialists MLM Solutions, has been appointed to take control of his assets and try to recover money owed to creditors.
“Ferguson, who lives in a gated mansion near Larkhall, Lanarkshire, has declared that he has only £3,000 worth of assets available to help pay off his creditors.”
It’s unlikely that this action has been caused by the so called big tax case from which Ferguson received £2.5m in a secret secondary contract from Dave Murray.
Despite having a side letter claiming that the club would cover any tax claim the liquidation of Rangers in 2012 has left Ferguson and dozens of team mates to face the consequences.
During the period of the secondary contracts Rangers were able to pay out more to players than every other club in Scotland while withholding details of their contracts from the SFA and SPL.
So far the football authorities have refused to take any retrospective action against a decade of cheating.
Kenny McIntyre of Radio Scotland was unavailable to comment on the issue but can reveal that Ferguson shops in B and M for bargain tins of beans.