How his break-ups burned a hole in his pocket
OFF the tennis court, Boris Becker’s most famous performance has been in the broom cupboard of a London restaurant.
It was there, off the staircase of Park Lane eatery Nobu, that he had an amorous encounter with Russian model Angela Ermokova. The result of those ‘few seconds’ was a daughter, now 17, a paternity suit, and a pay-off costing the sportsman £2million.
Divorce from his American wife Barbara soon followed, costing him up to £11million in cash, plus the main marital home in Miami and £2million in legal fees. Further support for their children, Noah, 23, and Elias, 17, has cost him yet more.
Becker has burned cash from his reputed total career earnings of as much as £100million in other ways too. His sprawling Majorcan villa, built in the 1990s in a Moroccan and Turkish style. It was the scene for numerous lavish parties.
Five years ago, however, a Spanish court made an order for the villa to be auctioned off with a starting price of £6.8million, to pay an outstanding debt of £225,000 to a landscape gardener.
At the same time he was ordered to pay £345,000 to a Spanish building firm which complained he had not settled for various work, and faced an £80,000 Spanish tax bill.
In Germany in 2012 he was ordered to pay almost £800,000 to a former business partner after an online organic foods firm flopped.
That was after he got a two-year suspended sentence and was told pay £2.5million to the Berlin taxman when his claims to have been a resident of tax haven Monaco were rejected.
He eventually got back the Majorca villa after paying his previous bill – but it is that 62-acre estate which he is now trying to raise a mortgage on.