The Mail on Sunday

£30k a week Premier League star goes bust!

- By Alex Miller

CRYSTAL PALACE’S Pape Souare has gone bust — despite earning £30,000 a week with the Premier League side.

The Senegal internatio­nal, on the bench for yesterday’s 2-1 home defeat by Liverpool, has entered into a voluntary insolvency arrangemen­t, four months after it emerged he was being privately prosecuted over a car crash that almost ended his career.

It is understood Souare, who joined Palace from Lille in 2015 for £3.5million, has had problems with paying a tax bill and HMRC are one of his major creditors.

It was reported in November that the left-back faced a prosecutio­n brought by Darshan Dube, who was charged by police with driving without due care and attention, following the incident in 2016.

Souare, who returned to first-team action after a year out, was a prosecutio­n witness in that case.

The 27-year-old broke his right thigh and jaw when he crashed his car into the central reservatio­n of the M4 after dropping off a friend at Heathrow Airport.

Souare was later summoned to court on dangerous driving charges, but did not enter a plea in the case and a trial date was set for July 16 this year.

According to official documents, Souare started the voluntary insolvency on March 5. An Individual Voluntary Arrangemen­t (IVA) is an agreement with outstandin­g creditors to pay all or part of outstandin­g debts.

Usually the individual will make regular payments to an insolvency practition­er, who will divide the money between creditors. An IVA can give more control over assets than a bankruptcy.

Both Crystal Palace and the player’s representa­tives declined to comment.

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