Boris Becker served eight months in English prisons in 2022 after being convicted of hiding £2.5million in assets from creditors – and he had some scary brushes with other inmates
Tennis legend Boris Becker has opened up on the terrifying incidents which happened during his time in English prisons.
Three-time Wimbledon champion Becker served eight months behind bars after being convicted of hiding £2.5million in assets from creditors. He was jailed for two and a half years in April 2022, having previously been declared bankrupt in 2017, when he owed creditors nearly £50m.
The German served his time in HMP Wandsworth and Huntercombe jail in Oxfordshire, where he encountered some scary individuals. Becker lived in fear during his time in prison, having had a scary run-in with a murderer.
“One day, I was coming back from lunch with my tray of food,” Becker details in a book being serialised by the Daily Mail. “As I passed Ike’s cell, Zac was in there. ‘Hey. What are you doing in Ike’s cell?’ I said. He came straight at me. ‘Who the f*** are you? I’m going to f*** you up. I’m going to break your head. I’m going to slit your throat. I’m going to kill you.’”
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Thankfully for Becker, he was saved from violence by other inmates, who stepped in to deescalate things. He was protected by Ike, whose reputation carried weight where he was locked up, leading to a dramatic apology from Zac.
“He started kissing my hand and saying sorry,” Becker explained. “He wasn’t just apologising to me but to Ike, who was the boss on our wing.”
Becker also explained another time he nearly came unstuck in prison, having got involved with playing poker with gangsters. “I was told that I owed them £500,” he said. “It was a shock. That would have been nothing to me on the outside. But inside it was a lot of money – your weekly allowance for about eight months.
“When I didn’t pay up, I could feel them staring at me, circling around me. Then, one afternoon, two of them came to my cell. A simple message: when are you going to pay?” He ended up organising a bank transfer to pay off his debts after being warned the gang’s leader was “a little crazy”.
The 57-year-old was surprised to discover that prison was run by the prisoners themselves and that he needed to form alliances in order to survive. He became friends with drug dealer Ike and Shuggy, a Sri Lankan gang member who had been jailed for murder.
Becker was relieved to be released in December 2022, when he was deported from the UK to Germany on a private jet. He later left his home country and settled in Milan, where he has settled with his wife Lillian.
Becker won Wimbledon as a 17-year-old in 1985 and went on to win two further Wimbledon titles, two Australian Opens and the US Open during a glittering career. He lived in London from 2012, but his bankruptcy stemmed from an unpaid loan of more than £3m on a luxury estate in Mallorca.