Three-time Wimbledon champion Boris Becker 'freed from jail and will be deported from UK'
15 December 2022, 11:05 | Updated: 15 December 2022, 11:40
Three-time Wimbledon champion Boris Becker has been freed from prison and now faces deportation from the UK.
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The 55-year-old tennis star has spent nearly eight months in prison after being sentenced over bankruptcy offences.
He was convicted in April of hiding £2.5 million-worth of assets and loans to avoid paying his debts.
Becker was declared bankrupt on June 21 2017 - owing creditors almost £50 million - over an unpaid loan of more than £3 million on his estate in Majorca.
The German, who has lived in the UK since 2012, was expected to serve half of his sentence behind bars but was released on Thursday morning and is due on a flight to be deported.
He is thought to have been transferred to a lower security jail for foreign criminals awaiting deportation in May - Category C Huntercombe Prison near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire - after allegedly being held at Category B Wandsworth Prison in south-west London.
The six-time Grand Slam champion qualified for automatic deportation because he is a foreign national who does not have British citizenship and received a custodial sentence of more than 12 months.
It comes after Becker said he had "hit rock bottom" in a new documentary on his conviction.
Speaking in a soon-to-be-released documentary made a few days ahead of his sentencing, an emotional Becker said: "I've hit my [rock] bottom, I don't know what to make of it.
"I (will) face (my sentence), I'm not going to hide or run away. (I will) accept whatever sentence I'm going to get.
"It's Wednesday afternoon and (on) Friday I know the rest of my life."
The Apple TV+ documentary was made by filmmakers who have been documenting the life of Becker, who won Wimbledon aged just 17, for three years in "deeply intimate interviews."
