Becker Could Face Jail Over £13m Tax Scandal

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

03 July 2001

In addition to a fine of over £13 million, three-times Wimbledon champion Boris Becker could also be facing a prison sentence over allegations that he used a residence in Monaco to avoid paying tax while still living in Germany in the early 1990s.

The five-year investigation led by Germany's Inland Revenue is about to come to a close and in an ironic twist of fate it is the evidence from one of Becker's greatest fans that could help investigators clinch a rock-solid case against him.

Hans Gerd collected newspaper cuttings on Becker for years culminating in a collection of 210 scrap books which detailed his whereabouts from day to day giving the investigators invaluable evidence of just when he was (or wasn't) residing in Monaco - so meticulous were Gerd's records that the German Tennis Federation has given him a job as official archivist!

Although he regretted that his scrapbooks have got Becker into so much hot water, Herr Gard, who perhaps is no longer such an impassioned fan as he once was, told the press: 'I sent copies of everything I did to Boris when I was cutting up 50 newspapers a day. He never once wrote and thanked me. Besides, if he really owes this money then it's his own lookout.'

But it is not just Herr Gard's scrapbooks that the German tax men have up their sleeve, they have also been working their way through Becker's bank account details, phone records, credit card history and flight ticket purchases from the four years he says he was officially residing in Monaco.

If found guilty over the tax scandal, Becker will face a fine of at least £13 million and there is wide-spread speculation that he may not be able to afford it. Since amassing a fortune estimated at around £140 million on the tennis circuit, Becker has led - according to German magazine, Focus - an extravagant lifestyle involving various homes, private jets, classy hotels, cars and an entourage of personal chefs, servants and secretaries. This, combined with the upkeep of an ex-wife, their two children and a love child from a quick romp with a Russian model, is likely to have significantly depleted the Becker coffers.

However, not only is Becker facing possible financial ruin, he could also be in store for a prison sentence because his lawyers have not yet been successful in securing an agreement confirming that any fine he does get will not come with a custodial sentence attached to it.

'Theoretically,' wrote Der Spiegel, the German news magazine, 'for a sum of this size, they would be thinking of a prison term.' And Becker only has to look as far as the case of Steffi Graf's father, Peter, who was sentenced to three years and nine months in 1997 for tax evasion, to realise this.

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