After eight months in prison in the United Kingdom for financial offences, former tennis world number 1 Boris Becker was released on Thursday, December 15, and immediately returned to Germany.
Boris Becker, 55 years old, “has served his sentence and is not subject to any criminal restrictions in Germany”said his lawyer, Christian-Oliver Moser, rejecting in advance, “for privacy reasons”any questions about “his place of residence”. The former champion would have arrived in Munich, Thursday, in the middle of the afternoon, aboard a Cessna plane from the private jet company Air Hamburg, according to the weekly Der Spiegel. The plane was chartered, according to British media, by an audiovisual company, whose name has not been made public, which paid a generous sum for him to tell his story.
The Apple TV + platform is due to broadcast a documentary soon in which the former champion confides, but interviews, granted to other media, could be in preparation.
Already sentenced in Germany in 2002
The six-time Grand Slam winner, who has lived in the UK since 2012, was found guilty in April of concealing or illicitly transferring hundreds of thousands of euros and pounds to avoid settling his debts after he been declared bankrupt. He had been sentenced to two and a half years in prison by a London court but only served eight months.
According to the Press Association, Boris Becker was released Thursday morning from Huntercombe prison, about 60 miles west of London, because he was eligible for deportation as a foreigner sentenced to more twelve months in prison.
At the time of his bankruptcy in 2017, following a series of bad deals, the debts of the ex-tennis superstar, Wimbledon’s youngest winner at 17, were estimated at up to 50 million pounds sterling (58 million euros).
This case is not the first for Boris Becker, a restless sportsman, who had lived in Monaco and Switzerland before settling in the United Kingdom. He had 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 had married him in 2009.
In 2002, the German courts sentenced him to a two-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 500,000 euros for some 1.7 million euros in tax arrears. This time, he was notably accused of having transferred hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling from a professional account to other accounts, in particular of his ex-wives, of not having declared property in Germany and of having hid a loan of 825,000 euros and shares in a company.
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Boris Becker, who contested all the charges, had, on the other hand, been acquitted of certain other charges, including those relating to the disappearance of his trophies. He had assured the hearing that he did not know where they were. Among the nine accolades creditors would have liked to get their hands on are two of his three Wimbledon cups, two Australian Open trophies and his doubles gold medal at the 1992 Olympics. star explained during the trial, which was held from March 21 to April 8, to still have in his possession ” a lot “ of awards and memories amassed in fifteen years on the circuit, but some have disappeared. He had already sold part of his awards at auction for 700,000 pounds (840,000 euros) in order to pay off part of his debts.
