Boris Becker, from Central to Central – Liberation

From his new home, Boris Becker will perhaps hear the roar of the Wimbledon stadium in a few weeks, where he has triumphed three times. The London temple of tennis is indeed less than 4 km as the crow flies from Wandsworth prison, where the former world number 1 entered on Friday April 29. In the morning, Judge Deborah Taylor imposed a 30-month prison sentence, of which he will serve at least half, for financial offenses related to his personal bankruptcy and the colossal debts accumulated over the years that followed his death. retired from sport in 1999. In the dilapidated jails of Wandsworth he was preceded by the writer Oscar Wilde, James Earl Ray, assassin of Martin Luther King, or the musicians Pete Doherty and Gary Glitter.

Aged 54, the German champion, who has lived in the United Kingdom since 2012, is found guilty of having transferred, to make believe in his insolvency, large sums of his accounts to those of several relatives, in particular his two ex- wives, and of having concealed properties, loans and shares in a company, all to the tune of 2.5 million pounds sterling (3 million euros).

Six-time winner of Grand Slam tournaments between 1985 and 1996 (only Roland-Garros escaped him), Boris Becker, nicknamed “Boom Boom”, has remained linked to the world of tennis, as a tournament commentator for the BBC and Australian television and Japanese. He was also coach of Novak Djokovic between 2014 and 2016, three years during which the Serb won 6 Grand Slam tournaments and two Masters. Enough to complete the fortune amassed on the courts: 25 million dollars, and probably an equivalent amount in advertising contracts.

Adultery and Divorce

Today, nothing remains of this fortune. Ruinous divorces, poorly managed investments, addictions to alcohol or poker… The champion’s downfall began the very moment he hung up his racquet. And 1999 is a cursed year. He had decided to quit at 31. In July 1999, he played his final Wimbledon, and fell with honors in the round of 16 against the Australian Patrick Rafter, seeded number 2.

The night of his elimination, he dines at Nobu, a famous Japanese restaurant in London. Barbara Feltus, his wife since 1993, does not accompany him: she is 7 months pregnant with their second child. Boris Becker’s gaze meets that of Angela Ermakova, waitress or customer depending on the version, Russian in any case. Acting out happens “in the stairwell” of the establishment, the tabloid press later revealed. Despite the denials of the young retiree, Frau Becker asked for a divorce, which she obtained in January 2001. At the end of a long-negotiated agreement, the adulterous husband had to pay 15 million dollars (same sum in euros at the time) to Barbara and him give up their property in Miami. He also loses custody of the two boys, Noah and Elias. And the addition is increased by lawyers’ fees: 3.5 million.

Previously, the soap opera rebounded with the revelation that a child had been born from the stealthy embrace. Constrained and forced by the result of a DNA test, Boris Becker recognized the paternity of little Anna Ermakova. Which will cost him more than 3 million additional euros. In his autobiography (1), the champion makes no secret of the reasons for his fall: an exuberant lifestyle, a devouring passion for mixed-race women, a lot of alcohol and sleeping pills… A new passion completes the picture: Boris is infatuated with poker and plays on the tables of professional players who feast on this fish (novice easy to pluck). His card losses are estimated at 15 million euros.

Hippies in the Balearics

At that time, the champion fixed his domicile in Monaco, which the sleuths of the German tax authorities dispute: their investigation proves that Boom Boom spends more time in Munich than on the Rock. He was sentenced to pay 3 million euros, between unpaid debts and fines, and received a six-month suspended prison sentence. Another symbol of his decadence: Son Coll, his property in Majorca, a Balearic island adored by his compatriots, to the point that it is nicknamed “the seventeenth land” from Germany. In 1997, he bought a finca, 200 hectare farm with two buildings. And added a new building “Moroccan style”, a large swimming pool, a tennis court and a basketball court. Unusual detail: the refuge of Boris Becker is only a few kilometers from Manacor, the birthplace of Rafael Nadal.

Ten years later, complaints are pouring in: he owes 276,000 euros to a green space maintenance company, 555,000 euros to a construction contractor, and nearly 100,000 euros in wages to the caretaker couple. In the absence of payment, the property is seized by a bank. In recent years, Son Coll was squatted by a picturesque Germanic hippie community. We even shot movies for adults there. the Daily Mail had fun in 2019 comparing the estate at the time of its splendor, and the state of disrepair in which it fell. The property is currently for sale, for 7.9 million euros.

Indifferent to the world that was collapsing around him, Boris Becker continued to comment on the major tournaments on the BBC, and launched lines of beauty products or clothing under his brand. In 2009, he made the front page of the people press again: he married model Lilly Kerssenberg in Saint-Moritz, Switzerland, during a sumptuous wedding with 200 guests from the jet-set. The former world number 1 found a good way to finance the feast: he sold the exclusive images to the German channel RTL. But the controversy catches up with him: the priest denounces the fact that the costs of renting the chapel and organizing the service, set at 9,500 Swiss francs (as many euros), have never been paid.

fake diplomatic passport

After spending the first half of his life on the tennis courts, Boris Becker spends the second half in the courts. As a logical consequence of the cascades of legal proceedings, he was declared in 2017 in personal bankruptcy by a London court. The following year, in another trial, Boris Becker brandished a diplomatic passport supposed to guarantee his immunity. According to him, the document accredited him as adviser to the president of the Central African Republic for sport and culture. A photo of him posing with Faustin-Archange Touadéra was supposed to authenticate his new status. In some confusion, the passport is finally denounced as a forgery from a stock of stolen documents.

In July 2019, the fallen star auctioned several dozen personal memories. The trophy received for his victory at the US Open 1989, a silver cup, flies away at 167,000 euros. But the total collected, 765,000 euros, is a drop in the ocean of debts that he must honor: 56 million. The English judges also wondered about other untraceable objects of Boum Boum’s heritage: his three Wimbledon trophies or his gold medal. [en double messieurs] at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. Head in the air, Boris admits that he does not remember where he put them. Without convincing.

The final episode is the one that sends him straight to jail. Yesterday’s champion has always been close to his children, two of whom are now models, Elias and Anna. And he kept in touch with his ex-wives, who, as the investigation showed, helped him to fraudulently conceal the crumbs that remained of his fortune. On April 28, Boris Becker appeared in court in London with his current partner, Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro, and his eldest son Noah, who was carrying a sports bag containing toiletries and a change of clothes. For the occasion, Boris Becker wore a green and purple striped tie: the colors of the Wimbledon tournament.

(1) Sans filet, Michel Lafon, 2004.