Boris Becker has been officially discharged from bankruptcy after the tennis legend made a successful appeal to an insolvency court.
The six-times Grand Slam champion was declared bankrupt in 2017 with total debts of around £50m. In 2022 he was jailed for two and a half years after being found guilty of hiding hundreds of thousands of pounds of assets and was deported from Britain, with a ban from returning until June 2025.
However Chief Insolvency and Companies Court Judge Briggs has formally discharged Becker after he agreed to a settlement with creditors, or joint trustees of his bankrupt estate.
In a decision filed at 10am on Wednesday morning, Judge Briggs wrote: "On the spectrum of bankrupts who range from 'difficult as possible...' to cooperative, providing information and delivering up assets, Mr Becker clearly falls on the right side of the line.
"Mr Becker has signed a statement of truth, engaged solicitors to ensure compliance with his obligations and entered a settlement agreement that benefits the joint trustees. I accept his evidence and find that objectively he has done all that he could reasonably do to fulfil his obligations to the joint trustees.
"If the exercise of discretion is required, I would exercise it in favour of Mr Becker and lift the suspension as it would be perverse to exercise it against Mr Becker given my decision that he has fulfilled his obligations."
The court document said that Becker explained in evidence that “he had no experience of managing his finances or business affairs as from an early age he had advisors and representatives” and “had no reason to believe that he had done anything wrong.”
Becker himself said: “The effect of my being made bankrupt was to turn my world upside down. I had no idea as to how I was in the position in which I found myself and I had no idea about the bankruptcy process itself.
“I was completely reliant on those advising me and I followed what I was being told, believing such steps to be in my best interests.
“With hindsight, I can see, and has now been explained to me, that some of the advice I was receiving was not only wrong, but wildly so, and provided by individuals who clearly did not have my best interests at heart.”
The judgment states that the trustees were “successful in realising a number of assets that vested in the estate, including 81 items of memorabilia.”
And Becker, who recently said he hopes to be allowed to return to Wimbledon next year, went on to tell the court: “I am simply incapable of doing more than I have done in terms of accounting for and delivering up assets, in particular the trophies.”