According to the Briton, the IPC chief executive Xavier Gonzalez was rung by his Rio 2016 counterpart Sidney Levy to be told the news during the Olympic Games in August.

“They simply said that there’s not a lot of money left in the account and what there was would be spent on the rest of the Olympics,” Sir Philip told The Times. 

“To be hit with the realisation that there could be nothing left for the Paralympics was...really worrying, to say the least."

At this stage, organisers had already missed a deadline to pay the first installment of $4.3 million (£3.5 million/€4.1 million).

But Sir Philip claimed that they had not realised that there was any danger of "impending calamity" until this point.

“The problem was that the Organising Committee had been hiding the reality from us," he added.

"And also probably from the middle management and below of their own organisation.

"I think it was only once the Olympics started that the Rio Mayor [Eduardo Paes] realised how important the Paralympics would be for his city. 

"We’d been telling him for a long time, but it clearly hadn’t sunk in.”

Sir Philip claims that he and Brazil's IPC vice-president Andrew Parsons travelled to Brasilia to meet with an unnamed "senior Government Minister" to discuss the situation.

They reportedly said that the "country was about to embarrass itself in front of the eyes of the watching world" if more money was not found.

“We had to make them realise,” Sir Philip added.

“That was a very productive meeting and it helped to get things moving.

“We never contemplated that the Games wouldn’t take place.

“But you do start thinking, ‘How the heck are we going to get out of this?’”

The IPC also appealed directly to Paes and organisers were eventually granted an extra R$150 million (£36 million/$46 million/€42 million) in Municipal Government funding.

"Drastic cuts" were also carried out to areas including venue capacity and the workforce.

A late flurry of ticket sales also generated vital revenue.

Sir Philip, who is due to stand-down as President after 16 years at the helm in September, also addressed their decision to ban Russian participation at the Rio Games in response the McLaren Report's evidence into state sponsored doping in the country at events including the Sochi 2014 Paralympics.

He insists that they were not put under pressure by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), who had opted against making a similar move.

“We made our own decision at the IPC and it was unanimous,” he said.

“We held a five-hour conference call, I was on a video link from Rio and four of our Board members were [at IPC offices] in Bonn. 

"The Russian delegation came in for the first three hours of that call and made their case.”

When asked how Russian figures had attempted to influence the decision, Sir Philip answered:  “I mustn’t talk about what they said, but I think any major nation has certain tactics that they will employ when they find themselves in difficulty."