West Ham United manager Sam Allardyce, Princess Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell and pop singers Mike Skinner of The Streets and Damon Gough (known as Badly Drawn Boy) were all investors in the schemes, according to the Mail on Sunday.

City figures, including Caspar Shand Kydd, nephew of Princess Diana’s stepfather, Peter Shand Kydd, also put in cash.

Five people said to be behind the alleged frauds were last month charged by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Keith Hayley, Robert Bevan, Charles Savill, Cyril Megret and Norman Leighton will appear before Birmingham magistrates next month.

The CPS said film tax reliefs were “abused and dishonestly marketed in order to cheat the public revenue. The evidence suggests the value of allowable losses was falsified, there was a conspiracy to defraud investors and that documents were falsified for accounting purposes”.

Companies House records show that the celebrities were investors. There is no suggestion any of them were aware of the alleged fraud. The CPS says the investors were also victims.

Film schemes have been popular among City and entertainment figures over the past ten years, but many set-ups have been challenged by the taxman.
Some investors sued their financial advisers over the plans.

Rebus, a claims management firm that is handling many of those actions, says more than 200 footballers have invested more than £1bn in similar ventures in the past 15 years.