Bankrupt Lawrence Dallaglio accused of ‘excessive spending’

Former England rugby star Lawrence Dallaglio has reportedly been accused of spending excessively on a lavish lifestyle despite being bankrupt.  

The 2003 World Cup winner was declared bankrupt last year after he and his wife of almost 20 years, Alice, divorced.

It ended with Dallaglio being forced into selling their family home for £2.4 million last May – after it had originally gone on the market for £3.3 million months earlier.

The day after the sale, Dallaglio was declared bankrupt and was ordered to hand over his share of the proceeds to pay off an overdrawn directors loan of more than £366,500.

Typically, restrictions imposed by bankruptcy end after 12 months in England and Wales but they can be extended by a judge, something that was done in May for Dallaglio for three months until August 7.

And now, according to The Telegraph, despite his position, Dallaglio is accused of continuing to spend heavily and leaving ‘nothing’ to pay his debts. 

England legend Lawrence Dallaglio has reportedly been accused of spending excessively on a lavish lifestyle despite being bankrupt

Dallaglio (pictured with ex-wife Alice) won the 2003 Rugby World Cup with England

The report claims that each month the ‘excessive spending’ incorporated £1,000 on clothing and footwear, the same amount on travel and transport, £800 on groceries and £500 on alcohol. 

It was also claimed that Dallaglio earned around £200,000 between August and January, yet spent it all, without leaving any to pay tax or his divorce settlement to his ex-wife. 

Across that period, Dallaglio worked as a rugby pundit on Premier Sports and was a columnist for The Sunday Times.  

In High Court documents obtained by The Telegraph, trustees of Dallaglio’s bankruptcy also accused him of being ‘largely uncooperative’, with one of them alleging there was ‘evidence of an undisclosed bank account’.  

Those claims were made after his bankruptcy was extended by three months following an application by Nick Parsk, a joint-trustee. Parsk had been looking to implement an Income Payments Order (IPO) against Dallaglio. 

An IPO is a court directive requiring a bankrupt person to pay a portion of their surplus income to their trustee to help repay creditors. 

Dallaglio has previously accused Parsk of providing ‘an incomplete picture’ in terms of how he has cooperated.  

In what is known as a ‘skeleton argument’ filed at the High Court, Parsk had similarly claimed Dallaglio ‘cancelled several appointments at which his rugby career memorabilia was to be valued’, while the information he was providing about his income and spending came ‘sporadically and unclearly’ as well as ‘late and incompletely’.

The application continued: ‘Mr Dallaglio’s spending habits mean that there is currently nothing left over to go towards the claims against his bankruptcy estate. 

‘There are no signs of Mr Dallaglio voluntarily reducing his spending – see the figures supplied earlier this year, where expected income decreased but intended expenditure did not.

‘Furthermore, it was only at this time that it came to the applicant’s attention that all earnings in the period 01.08.25 to 31.01.26 have been spent without savings for tax.’

Dallaglio rejected many of these claims in his witness statement, insisting he had ‘made significant efforts’ to collaborate with the trustee and ‘never sought to frustrate or evade’ the application for an extension to his bankruptcy. 

He also insisted that he did not conceal assets and added that his level of engagement was impacted by his late father’s death at the end of last year, before which he served as his ‘primary carer’ – and then ‘effectively handed over my entire inheritance to the bankruptcy estate’. 

Dallaglio’s lawyer, Sanjeev Punj of SP Legal Solutions, told Telegraph Sport: ‘The trustee’s skeleton argument contains a number of allegations which are strongly disputed by Mr Dallaglio and not accepted.’

Dallaglio was declared bankrupt last year after he and Alice divorced after almost 20 years 

Documents published in December revealed Dallaglio owed a further £423,570 in overdrawn director’s loans for his failed sports company Lawrence Dallaglio Ltd.

Dallaglio, who spent all of his club career with Wasps, also owed more than £60,000 to liquidators – more than two years after they were appointed.

There have also been claims totalling about £350,000 and £61,000 by HM Revenue & Customs and two other creditors.