German tennis star Boris Becker, who won six Grand Slam titles and earned £39 million ($50 million) during his career, has been jailed for two-and-a-half years by a judge in London for breaching the terms of his bankruptcy.
Becker, 54, was made bankrupt in 2017 but earlier this month he was convicted of two counts of failing to disclose estate and concealing debt and one count of removal of property under Britain’s Insolvency Act.
On Apr. 29 he appeared at Southwark Crown Court and was jailed for two-and-a-half years by Judge Deborah Taylor, who told him: “I accept the humiliation you have felt but you’ve shown no humility.”
A trial at the same court heard he had transferred hundreds of thousands of pounds from his business account and failed to declare a property in his hometown of Leimen in Germany’s Rhine valley.
Becker, who won three Wimbledon titles and was a regular commentator for the BBC, was also convicted of hiding an 825,000 euro (£700,000/$869,000) bank loan and 75,000 shares in an IT firm.
The maximum sentence he faced was seven years.
Jonathan Laidlaw QC, counsel for Becker, pleaded for him to be given a suspended sentence and told the hearing: “Boris Becker has literally nothing and there’s nothing to show for what was the most glittering of sporting careers. That is nothing short of a tragedy.”
But prosecutor Rebecca Chalkley said he had been “playing the system with bad faith.”
Becker, who was accompanied to court by his girlfriend Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro and son Noah, was previously convicted of tax evasion and attempted tax evasion in Germany in 2002.
He told the Southwark Crown Court trial the money he earned during his career was gobbled up in a divorce from his first wife Barbara Becker, child maintenance payments, and “expensive lifestyle commitments,” including renting a house near the famous Wimbledon tennis courts for £22,000 ($27,600) a month.
Becker has lived in Britain since 2012 but was declared bankrupt in June 2017 over an unpaid £3 million ($3.77 million) loan on his estate on the Spanish island of Majorca.
He insisted he had co-operated with the bankruptcy trustees over his assets and said he had lost his tennis trophies and medals. He was acquitted of 20 other charges at the Southwark trial, some of which related to the missing trophies.
Becker won his first Wimbledon title when he was just 17 and he followed it up with two more championships at the All England Club, two Australian Opens, and a U.S. Open. He retired from playing in 1999.
