The tennis player Boris Becker (55 years old, Leimen, Germany) has taken advantage of the end of the year to make his particular balance of 2022. He has done it through his Instagram account, from a beach located on the African island of São Tomé and Príncipe —birthplace of his current partner, the political risk analyst Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro—, 18 days after being released after his eight-month stay in a British prison: “On the last day of the year, I want to dedicate some words to all my loved ones and to the people who have supported me in what I call the most difficult year of my life”, the athlete begins by saying, “but it is over and over.
I have come out alive.
I think I've come out stronger.
I think my mental health is better than ever, but without the support, help, love and affection of so many people, I would not have made it.
Becker, with six Grand Slams to his credit, was sentenced last April to two and a half years in prison for misappropriation of assets.
He hid assets worth almost three million euros to avoid paying taxes.
The athlete was held since May 2022 in a low-security prison, near the town of Henley-on-Thames, awaiting his deportation, for being a citizen under criminal conviction and without British nationality, although he resided in the Kingdom UK since 2012. Eight months later he was released, albeit banned from the UK for several years, under the terms of his release.
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Boris Becker triumph and fall
“You have lost your career and your reputation, as well as all your assets.
It is remarkable that he has not shown any sign of repentance or acknowledgment of his guilt," Judge Deborah Taylor told Becker at the time, before sending him to the cells of the Southwark judicial premises, as a step prior to his imprisonment.
"I understand the humiliation that you may have suffered throughout this process, but you have been incapable of showing any humility," the magistrate reproached him.
Prison could have been a humbling cure for Becker, according to the account he gave of his experience in his first interview after his release, given to journalist Steven Gätjen on the German television program
SAT.1
last December: "In the prison you are a nobody.
You are just a number.
Mine was A2923EV.
My name wasn't Boris, it was a number.
And nobody gives a shit who you are, ”he recounted in that interview.
His 231 days in prison helped him “reflect on his life” and rediscover his “human side”: “I think I rediscovered the person I used to be.
I learned a hard lesson.
A very expensive one.
Very painful, but I learned.
Some things happen for a good reason."
His release from prison has not been universally well received, not even in his homeland, where, in recent years, Becker has gone from being a leading figure in the sports world to tabloid fodder after starring in various scandals.
The first of these took place in 2001, when a DNA test forced him to recognize an illegitimate daughter, Anna, that he had with the model Angelika Ermakova after a brief sexual encounter with the girl's mother during the Wimbledon tournament of the year 1999. That scandal would go down in history as "Becket's five most expensive seconds": in addition to causing his expensive divorce from Barbara Feltus, with whom he had been married since 1993 and, together, they had become a symbol of marital stability and the face of a “new Germany”,
he also suffered a serious blow to his reputation by acknowledging that his intimacy with Ermakova occurred when his then-wife was pregnant with the couple's second child.
The second scandal took place in 2002, when he was sentenced by a Munich court to two years probation for evading taxes from the German treasury, a total of 1.7 million euros between 1991 and 1993.
Now, Becker continues to arouse ambivalence in Germany: “He has deceived many people and that is not right.
He has to serve his sentence like everyone else.
I don't like it at all when they treat you with kid gloves just because you are a famous and well-known person, ”Cathy Hummels (34 years old),
influencer
and ex-wife of Bayern Munich defender Mats Hummels, as well as a friend , said forcefully in a podcast
intimate of Becker's second ex-wife, Lilly Becker.
As reported by the British newspaper
The Times
, the tennis player has already filed a defamation complaint against the
influencer,
which has led other celebrities in Germany to doubt Becker's words and story in which he affects the change produced after his time in prison.
One of these celebrities has been the comedian Oliver Pocher (44 years old), Becker's scourge on television through different
sketches
, and denounced by the tennis player on several occasions in the past.
Recently, the comedian once again disguised himself as a tennis player to present a monologue, in which he laughed at the supposed "humility" of the athlete, while accepting a first interview on German television for around 450,000 euros: "I have given the interview of the year on
SAT.1
″, said the comedian;
“They paid in cash, which of course I really like.
I made mistakes, lots of mistakes.
But I got paid for them."
Little is known about the future plans of the recently released Boris Becker.
Behind him was his life in the London neighborhood of Battersea, an area south of the Thames to which he can no longer return.
Nor does it seem that he is going to settle in Germany.
Some newspapers mention that he would have thought of moving to Miami or Dubai.
At the moment, he receives 2023 on the African coast.