The former world number 1 tennis player was sentenced Friday by a London court to two and a half years in prison for fraud related to his bankruptcy.
Declared bankrupt in June 2017, the six-time Grand Slam winner was accused of failing to comply with his obligations to disclose information, including bank information.
He was accused of concealing several properties and about £1.8 million (€2.1 million).
He was also accused of not handing over some of his Wimbledon and Australian Open trophies to settle his debts.
In July 2019, 82 items, including other trophies and personal memorabilia, had been auctioned off and had brought in 765,000 euros, a sum intended to clear some of his debts.
At the time of his bankruptcy in June 2017, his debts were estimated at up to 50 million pounds.
Grave face, he wore a purple and green tie, the colors of Wimbledon
He is accused, among other things, of having transferred hundreds of thousands of pounds from a business account to other accounts, including those of his ex-wives, of not having declared a property in Germany and of having hidden a loan of 825,000 euros and shares in a company.
Boris Becker had arrived Friday morning in a London cab at the court, walking hand in hand with his companion Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro, before entering the building. With a serious face, he wore a purple and green tie, the colors of Wimbledon, while his eldest son, Noah, 28, entered with a sports bag.
At the trial in London, prosecutor Rebecca Chalkley accused him of using a business account as a “piggy bank” for day-to-day expenses or his children’s school fees.
Becker, several legal setbacks
The announcement of his bankruptcy came a few days before the Wimbledon tournament, where the first German player to win a Grand Slam title worked for the BBC and Australian and Japanese television.
At the hearing, he said he was “shocked by the situation”. “It was all over the news, I walked through the doors of Wimbledon and everyone knew. I was embarrassed because I was bankrupt,” he said.
According to him, his bankruptcy and its treatment in the media damaged the “Becker brand”, so that he then had difficulties to pay back his debts.
This case is not the first for Boris Becker, who had lived in Monaco and Switzerland before moving to England. He has already had legal setbacks for unpaid debts with the Spanish justice, concerning work in his villa in Mallorca, and with the Swiss justice, for not having paid the pastor who married him in 2009. In 2002, the German justice system sentenced him to a two-year suspended prison sentence and a 500,000 euro fine for some 1.7 million euros in back taxes.
