Milo Yiannopoulos is ‘more than $2m in debt’
Milo Yiannopoulos reportedly owes millions to a host of creditors (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty)
Gay far-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos owes $2 million, according to reports.
Yiannopoulos is said to owe sums to a host of people and companies including his employees, a wedding venue, former lawyers, jewellery company Cartier and the billionaire Mercer family.
The conservative figurehead, who was one of the leaders of the alt-right movement which saw Donald Trump elected as US President in 2016, is $1.6 in debt to his company alone, according to The Guardian.
Far-right writers and provocateurs including Pamela Geller, Ian Miles Cheong and Theodore Beale—also known as Vox Day—are also waiting for several thousands of dollars in payments from Yiannopoulos.
“Milo comes first, at all times”
— Milo Yiannopoulos
He reportedly owes $400,000 to the Mercer family, which partly co-owned Cambridge Analytica, has donated tens of millions of dollars to conservative causes, including more than $25 million to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Milo Yiannopoulos ‘asked promoters to cover bills’
While attempting to get his Australian tour off the ground, Yiannopoulos reportedly asked his former promoters, Australian Events Management, to pay his living expenses, his employees’ wages and medical bills for he and his husband.
He is also said to have asked brothers Ben and Dan Spiller, who ran the company, for sums which the Spillers say they had already given him.
In WhatsApp messages allegedly sent by the former alt-right figurehead to the Spiller brothers, Yiannopoulos wrote: “I’m the star, and it’s my show, and you need to get used to it.
“So now we have the relationship I have with all my other business partners,” he added, before telling his promoters: “Milo comes first, at all times.”
Milo Yiannopoulos reportedly told his Australian promoters: “I’m the star, and it’s my show, and you need to get used to it” (Michael Masters/Getty)
In a different message, he told the brothers: “I am less financially secure, more panicked and stressed, and more miserable than when we started,” before adding that he had had to return his wedding ring to Cartier to settle his debt with the company.
Milo Yiannopoulos’ planned tour was full of anti-LGBT personalities
Yiannopoulos’s tour of Australia was set to happen in April, September and December of 2018, but failed to get off the ground each time.
The plan was to feature a host of far-right activists, including Ann Coulter—who has said the US should refuse entry to people with HIV— and Australian senator Fraser Anning, who called LGBT+ people sexual deviants, perverts and child abusers in September.
English Defence League founder Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who also goes by Tommy Robinson, and the founder of FBI-dubbed extremist group Proud Boys Gavin McInnes—who mocked a disabled gay man in June—were also on the proposed bill.
Yiannopoulos, who dropped a $10 million lawsuit against publisher Simon & Schuster earlier this year, responded to the report by saying that the debts referred to the documents seen by The Guardian were “company debts, not personal” and were “not court filings. They are a dox.”
He also said: “I’m doing fine and bringing in $40k US a month,” before calling the Spillers “crooks and clowns.”
In a YouTube video, the far-right personality said his former promoters were “fraudulent”, “insane” and “incompetent,” and included their email addresses in posts on social media.
The Spillers said that they had begun legal action against Yiannopoulos in order to secure the “return of funds” from him.
