I will visit my dad while he’s serving time
BECKER GIRL’ S SHOCK AT JAIL TERM
BORIS Becker’s daughter told yesterday of her shock at the fallen tennis legend’s prison sentence and vowed to regularly visit him in jail.
As one-time golden boy Becker, 54, prepared for his second night in a grim British slammer, Anna Ermakova revealed she had written to the judge begging her not to send her dad down.
The German former Wimbledon champ was sentenced to two and a half years at London’s Southwark crown court on Friday for fraudulently hiding £2.5million from creditors after his bankruptcy in 2017.
Anna, 22, said: “Honestly I’m in shock about my father’s sentence. I wasn’t really expecting it at all.
“I was actually on the phone with my brothers after the verdict was announced. We were all just in shock really.”
The model added: “I have been trying to support him on the phone as best I can.
“I wish him the best and hope he is strong in such a difficult time in his life.
“I will support him and visit him whenever I can and I hope this will help a bit to get through the time.”
Scandal
Anna was conceived following an infamous five-minute encounter between the six-time Grand Slam winner and her Russian waitress mum Angela in a secluded spot at Park Lane’s Nobu restaurant in 1999.
The scandal, which led to a paternity test and High Court battle, caused the breakdown of Becker’s marriage to wife Barbara and reportedly cost him £11million.
The German, who has lived in Britain since 2012 and has regularly worked as a BBC commentator at Wimbledon, spent Friday night on a 24hour reception wing in HMP Wandsworth,
South London.
The Victorian-built jail is just three miles from his home and the All England
Tennis Club where he shot to fame by becoming the tournament’s youngest winner, aged 17 years and 228 days.
Anna said she now fears for her stepbrother Amadeus, 12, who hugged his dad just hours before he was jailed.
Amadeus is the son from Becker’s marriage to second wife Lilly, 45, from whom he is now separated.
Anna said: “I tried to help as best I could by writing a letter to the court expressing my concern for my younger brother Amadeus in particular.
“He is only 12 and he’s not going to have a paternal figure in the near future to support him at such a crucial time.
“He’s going to start a new school soon making new friends and that’s hard enough as it is without a father figure.”
But judge Deborah Taylor, sitting in the crown court’s aptly named Court One, rejected Anna’s plea as well as a letter from Becker’s mother, Elvira, 87.
Aggravating
Elvira described her son as a “decent boy overall” – despite his 2002 conviction and suspended sentence in Germany for £1.7million tax evasion.
Judge Taylor, who condemned Becker’s lack of remorse and humility, told him: “You did not heed the warning you were given and the chance you were given by the suspended sentence and that is a significant aggravating factor.”
Becker, wearing a striped purple-andgreen Wimbledon tie in the dock, arrived for sentencing with his girlfriend Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro, a risk analyst who is in her early forties.
He was found guilty last month of four charges under the Insolvency Act and will have to serve at least half his sentence in jail before he is eligible for parole.