I am not bankrupt, says Becker, as he tries to stop trophy auction
‘This auction is about hurting me personally’
BORIS BECKER has denied he is bankrupt and said he is taking out an order to stop his trophies being sold off.
Becker said yesterday: “The whole world is asking, ‘How can you pay for dinner? How can you pay for your flat? We thought you were bankrupt’. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve paid all I owe.”
And the retired tennis champion said in comments yesterday that his lawyers were applying for a restraining order to prevent an auction taking place for some of his belongings, which include Wimbledon trophies he won at the height of his career.
He told a German tabloid: “This auction is about hurting me personally because, of course, I’m emotionally attached to the trophies.”
It is thought that the online auction, due to end on Thursday, will raise thousands of pounds for creditors. It includes trophies, watches, tennis shoes and a signed photograph from Richard von Weizsäcker, the German president in 1992, who presented it to him after he won Olympic gold in Barcelona in the men’s tennis doubles with German compatriot Michael Stich.
The restraining order application comes as the former world number one claims he has a diplomatic passport from the Central African Republic, despite dismissals from officials there. He says the passport grants him diplomatic immunity from bankruptcy proceedings in the UK. “I have received this passport from the ambassador,” he said on the BBC’S Andrew Marr Show.
“I have spoken to the president on many occasions. It was an official inauguration. I believe the documents they are giving me must be right.” But the three-time Wimbledon champion has been met with a series of denials by officials in the African state.
“When you mention Boris Becker, people lose their reality or their sense of facts and they start imagining things that are absolutely not true,” he added.
Legal proceedings are not the first tactic he has used to try to hold on to his belongings. Yesterday The Sunday Telegraph reported that Becker was being urged to “remember” where some of his prized trophies were after he claimed to have forgotten where he had put his three “most valuable” trophies, those from Wimbledon.
One, for his victory over Ivan Lendl in the 1986 final, was discovered in the care of Becker’s mother, Elvira, who says it was a gift from her son.
Mark Ford, director of Smith & Williamson, handling the bankruptcy, said his team had visited the German property for items they could auction. The whereabouts of the other two trophies, from 1985 and 1989, remain unknown.
Memorabilia from his career being auctioned online by Wyles Hardy & Co, based in Hemel Hempstead, Herts, include trophies and four wristwatches.
At the High Court last week, a judge suspended the discharge of Becker’s bankruptcy in order to grant the trustees further time to search for assets.