Boris Becker’s Balearic break: Disgraced tennis legend is seen out and about in Ibiza with girlfriend Lilian de Carvalho – days after opening up about his time in ‘dangerous’ UK prison

• Becker owned a luxurious villa in neighbouring Mallorca that fell into disrepair
• It played a part in his bankruptcy and subsequent trial for hiding assets

Boris Becker has been pictured back in the Balearic Islands where he once owned a home which played a role in his fraud trial that saw him imprisoned in the UK.

The disgraced tennis legend, 55, was seen on Tuesday on the island of Ibiza with his girlfriend Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro, 32.

The pair were photographed getting out of a modest Dacia Lodgy – presumed to be a hire car – in the parking lot of a restaurant on the party island.

It is understood that they are currently on holiday in the Spanish islands, where they have been spotted indulging in the local cuisine, and making the most of Becker’s new-found freedom after his release last year.

Lilian stuck by Becker after he was jailed for two years and a half years for hiding £2.5 million in assets to avoid paying his debts in April 2022. 

Boris Becker has been pictured back in the Balearic Islands where he once owned a home which played a role in his fraud trial that saw him imprisoned in the UK

The disgraced tennis legend, 55, was seen on Tuesday on the island of Ibiza with his girlfriend Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro, 32

Ibiza is one of four Balearic Islands, and neighbours Mallorca – the largest of the islands and where Becker owned a huge mansion that featured stables, an outdoor swimming pool, four guest houses, a helicopter pad and a tennis court made from parts of Wimbledon furniture.

The villa was left abandoned and fell into disrepair, and in 2020 it was reported that he had handed they keys back to the £9million home as part of his bankruptcy proceedings. Becker went bankrupt in 2017 with debts of £11million.

This was despite earning around £120m in prizes and sponsorship in a career which netted him 49 singles titles, six of them Grand Slams.

Becker was declared bankrupt by the Bankruptcy and Companies Court in London, with the order arising when a 2015 debt – centred around an unpaid loan of $14million on Becker’s Mallorca estate – was not repaid by the deadline.

He was later charged with illegally failing to hand over assets and trophies with a value of £2.5million to repay his debt during his bankruptcy. 

The tennis great went on to serve eight months of his two-and-a-half year sentence for hiding millions of pounds worth of assets to avoid paying off debts.

He was imprisoned at HMP Huntercombe, a category C prison in Oxfordshire. 

Speaking over the weekend, Becker said he was forced to make friends with the ‘tough boys’ in prison to survive, as vowed to win ‘the fifth set’ of his life.

The pair were photographed getting out of a modest Dacia Lodgy – presumed to be a hire car – in the parking lot of a restaurant on the party island

Pictured: Boris Becker’s abandoned mansion in Mallorca

In an interview with 5 Live Breakfast on Saturday (April 8), he said incarceration was a ‘real punishment’ but that he had discovered that he is a ‘survivor’.

Addressing questions about whether he will return to punditry roles on the BBC in the near future, he said he was talking to the ‘responsible people’. 

However, he is not allowed back on UK soil until October 2024 after he was deported following his release from prison.   

Speaking ahead of the release of a new documentary about his life and career, Becker said that the time in prison was a ‘real punishment’ and that anyone who said it wasn’t very hard was dishonest.  

‘It’s a real punishment. It’s supposed to be a punishment, being incarcerated and anyone who says prison life isn’t hard and isn’t difficult is lying. 

‘I think it’s a really difficult life and from where I am coming from, I’ve never been incarcerated before so it was a very brutal, new, very different experience to what you see in the movies or what you heard from stories.’ 

Becker said he had been forced to make friends with the ‘tough boys’ in prison to make sure he was safe, saying prison is ‘very dangerous’.  

‘Prison is very dangerous. As I said, it’s a dangerous place, you fight every day for survival. 

Becker was released from prison and deported to Germany after serving eight months of a two-and-a-half-year sentence for failing to declare £2.5m in assets to avoid paying debts

Boris Becker of Germany celebrates winning the 1985 Wimbledon Championships. He stunned the world when he took the tennis scene by storm aged just 17 

Boris Becker has officially confirmed that he won’t be attending Wimbledon this summer

‘I was surrounded by murderers, by drug dealers, by rapists, by people smugglers, by dangerous criminals.

‘Quickly you have to surround yourself with the ‘tough boys’ as I would call them, because you need protection. If you think you are better than everybody else, then you lose. So that was the harsh reality of this every day, facing different people.’

Now, he’s now trying to get his old luxurious life back. 

Alongside his travels in Ibizia and visits to a luxurious restaurant in Stuttgart, Becker has appeared on the red carpet at a film festival in Berlin where he enjoyed rapturous applause and fielded questions about a new documentary film on his life – a project that’s sure to make him some extra cash.   

In the ‘Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker’ documentary, Becker opened up on his time in jail, his affair with a Russian model that ruined his marriage and his whirlwind rise into a global tennis star as a teenager. 

The trailer for the documentary dropped last month and features legend of tennis such as John McEnroe, Bjorn Borg and Novak Djokovic – who has worked with Becker as a coach – reflecting on his legacy.

But it’s Becker in his own words that provides by far the most insight, especially when reflecting on his more controversial moments of his life. 

On his time in prison, Becker gets tearful and chokes up as he admits: ‘I’ve hit my bottom. But that’s not the end yet, there is going to be another chapter.’

Former tennis player and Wimbledon champion Boris Becker and his girlfriend Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro at the “Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker” premiere during the 73rd Berlinale International Film Festival Berlin on February 19 in Berlin 

Lilian stuck by Becker after he was jailed for two years and a half years for hiding £2.5 million in assets to avoid paying his debts in April 2022. Pictured: Becker and Lilian arriving at Southwark Crown Court for the sentencing 

He also opens up about discovering about his lovechild after a fling with Russian model Angela Ermakova in 1999.

The affair cost him his marriage with then-wife, Barbara. 

Becker has said previously that he had put the one-night stand with Ermakova out of his mind, until she later made contact with him to say she was eight months pregnant.

Picking up the story in the documentary, he explains: ‘She came in, she had a big coat on. She took the coat off and she was heavily pregnant. You just can’t believe it. The wake-up call came very late.’

Source: Read Full Article