Former poker ambassador and tennis legend Boris Becker sentenced to two years in prison
The world-famous Boris Becker, who built a brilliant career in tennis and then in poker, is preparing to go to prison for 2.5 years. It would seem how such a talented and successful man could have come to this. But greed took over and now even someone like Becker has “gone bad”.
Boris was found guilty on four charges at once. These include concealment of debt, seizure of property, and concealment of assets in connection with bankruptcy. The latter was in 2017. The trial took place at Southwark Crown Court and Deborah Taylor acted as judge.
Becker’s illustrious career
Boris Becker won six Grand Slam tournaments. Already a tennis coach, his mentee was the famous Serbian Novak Djokovic. He was eventually called to work on the economic advisory board of a famous football company in Germany called Bayern Munich.
More time passed and Becker’s talent came in handy in the poker arena. He was invited to become a member of Team PokerStars. This happened in the autumn of 2007. In 2016, a contract with partypoker ‘flew in’ for Boris. The poker resource promoted using poker professionals for such purposes.
Boris has become a poker champion on more than one occasion. That’s how he ended up winning prizes on the EPT. They were held in Barcelona and Berlin. He also had a great result at the WPT Devilfish Cup. Poker tournaments ‘funded’ Becker until 2016 inclusive.
In 2020, Boris decided to reassert himself as a professional poker player. During the pandemonium, he made a post on his Twitter account. Boris made a video of himself saying that he takes part in online gambling at GGPoker and Kings Casino.
Bankruptcy
June 2017 was another turning point for Boris, although this time quite unpleasant. He had to declare bankruptcy as he had an outstanding loan of around £4m hanging over his home in Spanish Majorca. But things turned out to be much more interesting than that.
After he was declared bankrupt, information began to emerge that Becker’s career had earned him around $50m. According to the documents, part of the income went to the divorce settlement with his first wife Barbara. Another part went to child support. Finally, there is an expenditure column, which is called expensive lifestyle commitments.
Recently, Boris was accused of transferring a tidy sum from his business account. This also involved property located in the German town of Laimen, where the poker player himself is from. This property is not officially listed in his declarations.
Another high-profile accusation is that the sportsman concealed a bank loan. Its size is 825 thousand euros. There is also 75 thousand shares of a company, characterized as a technology company. The poker player was also silent about this and was actually charged for hiding this information.
