Prodigy singer Keith Flint owed £7.3million in debts and taxes when he died aged just 49, it was revealed today.
The singer’s £11.6million estate was slashed by two thirds to £4.3million after his suicide at his Essex mansion in March this year.
Mr Flint had made more than £1.5million in the past two years with The Prodigy releasing its seventh consecutive number one album, No Tourists, last November and starting their 2019 world tour.
But the star, who battled depression, had recently split with his Japanese wife Mayumi and put the £1.5million mansion ‘he loved’ in Dunmow, Essex, up for sale on the eve of his death.
And it has emerged that his pub firm De Bohun Inns Limited, which owned several Essex pubs including the Leather Bottle in Pleshey, had debts of more than £500,000.
Keith had admitted he would spend his money rather than keep it for a rainy day and said in 2015: ‘I’m not saving for anything. I’m cashing it all now. I’ve always had this thing inside me that, when I’m done, I’ll kill myself’.
Keith Flint, the colourful frontman of the band The Prodigy (pictured at Roskilde Festival in 2010), was found dead in March and his estate had to pay £7.3million in debts and taxes when he died
The legendary Prodigy frontman was found dead at his £1.5million home (pictured) near Dunmow, Essex, and had put it up for sale just before his death this year
The Leather Bottle pub in the Essex village of Pleshey bought in 2014 by Keith Flint – his pub company was losing £500,000
And today figures from the Probate Office revealed that his £11.6million fortune was reduced to £4.3million after £7.3million in debts and taxes needed to be paid, The Sun has said.
Keith Flint (pictured right in 2001) had fallen into depression after a split from his Japanese wife Mayumi Kai (pictured together left in 2009)
Mr Flint had drunk alcohol and taken cocaine and codeine before his death in March, an inquest heard.
The Firestarter singer was found hanged at his £1.5million home, leaving fans around the world devastated.
Tests found he had a number of substances in his system, although how much and whether they may have impaired his thinking was not divulged at the inquest.
Flint had spoken of kicking drugs and alcohol after meeting Japanese wife Mayumi.
After his death at the age of 49 it emerged the couple had split up and their four-bedroom Tudor mansion in Essex which he ‘loved’ had recently gone on the market.
Essex senior coroner Caroline Beasley-Murray yesterday said there was insufficient evidence to show he had committed suicide, saying: ‘To record that I would have to have found that, on the balance of probabilities, Mr Flint formed the idea and took a deliberate action, knowing it would result in his death.’
She also found insufficient evidence to conclude his death was the result of an accident, for example if he had been ‘larking around and it all went horribly wrong’.
Mrs Beasley-Murray added: ‘We will never know what was going on in his mind on that date, so that’s why I am going to record an open conclusion.’
No witnesses were called to give evidence at the brief hearing in Chelmsford, which was not attended by Flint’s family, band members or manager.
Mrs Beasley-Murray expressed her sympathy to them, adding: ‘He was muchloved by so many fans.’
Huge crowds of fans gathered in Braintree in Essex on March 29 for the singer’s flamboyant funeral
Friends once feared the singer – labelled the ‘scariest man in music’ in the 1990s because of his mohawk hairstyle and manic dancing – would not make it past 40 because of his drug habit.
He admitted taking ‘coke, weed, drinking a lot’ before moving on to prescription drugs, which he said he downed ‘until I passed out’.
More recently he had taken up running and horse riding around the period property near Felsted where he was found unresponsive on March 4 after concerns were raised about his welfare.
Paramedics tried to resuscitate him but he was pronounced dead there shortly afterwards.
Police confirmed there were no suspicious circumstances and no one else was involved, the inquest heard yesterday.
After his death, band founder Liam Howlett wrote online: ‘I’m shell shocked, angry, confused and heartbroken… rip brother.’
The band released their seventh consecutive number one album, No Tourists, in November and had recently returned from a tour of Australia.
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