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David Beckham 'changed date of Unicef Downing Street visit for tax purposes'

David Beckham reportedly put off a visit to Downing Street as part of a Unicef delegation "for tax reasons".

The former England football captain, who was living in the US at the time, was asked in 2012 by the UN children's charity to meet the then Prime Minister David Cameron with a group of youngsters.

"The problem for this one is that I cannot go home," he allegedly wrote, according to a leaked email.

The correspondence is part of a trove of hacked emails that have been released.  A source close to Beckham said: “These emails are out of date, out of context and have been doctored in some cases."

Beckham, who was playing for LA Galaxy in 2012, was domiciled in the US for tax purposes and if he travelled to the UK it could mean paying more to HM Revenue and Customs, the Daily Mail reported.

David Beckham life & career timeline

British expatriates can legally avoid paying tax as long as they visit Britain for no more than 90 days each tax year. 

Beckham allegedly discussed the invitation from Unicef, for whom he is a global ambassador, with his aide Dave Gardner.  

"Obviously we cannot tell them the real reason," Mr Gardner reportedly wrote.

Simon Oliveira, Beckham’s his long-time publicist, said the footballer would stay in the US "for important personal reasons", according to the leaked emails, published by a number of European news websites.

Among them was the France-based Mediapart website, which claimed: "Beckham does not want to honour the invitation for tax reasons."

A Unicef spokesman confirmed the engagement went ahead after it was rearranged to a more convenient date. "David Beckham went to Downing Street on July 26, 2012, to call for more action to help children affected by malnutrition around the world," he told the Daily Mail. 

A source close to Beckham told the newspaper: ‘David is now domiciled in the UK for tax, but he wasn’t when he worked overseas. For periods of time, he was based outside the UK. He just couldn’t travel to the UK on that particular date.

"But the Unicef event did go ahead, at a later date, so it would be wrong to say he let them down. Really it’s a situation in which an event moved by a month – around a guy who was abroad with his team role and donating huge amounts of money to charity at the time. 

"One of the periods David was living abroad, he was donating his entire salary to Unicef when in Paris, so it’s a bit rich to suggest that him being overseas was bad for the charity."

Beckham’s advisers are trying to repair his reputation after the publication of emails between him and Mr Oliveira, which have led to suggestions his charity work as a Unicef ambassador was part of a ploy to earn a knighthood.

Fearing further damaging material from his private emails may become public, he is considering hiring a private investigator to find the person who tried to blackmail his publicist for £1 million.