Boris Becker has reportedly been transferred to a prison used to detain foreign criminals, indicating he will be deported from the UK at the end of his sentence.
According to the Times, Becker’s lawyer told journalists in Berlin that he had been transferred to HMP Huntercombe in Oxfordshire.
The former world No 1 tennis player had been detained at Wandsworth prison, a category B prison, after he was jailed for two and a half years for concealing £2.5m of assets to avoid paying money he owed after his bankruptcy. He will serve half of the sentence.
The German, 54, has lived in the UK since 2012 but is understood not to have British citizenship.
His lawyer reportedly told journalists in Berlin on Tuesday: “Boris Becker was transferred to Huntercombe prison today. It is a category C prison, which means it has a low security level.”
The latest inspection of HMP Huntercombe in 2017 found that of 197 men released from the prison, 185 had been deported immediately.
Becker will qualify for automatic deportation because he is a foreign national without British citizenship who has received a prison sentence of more than 12 months.
Becker, who has a 12-year-old son, Amadeus, with his estranged wife Sharley “Lilly” Becker, could appeal against deportation.
Becker, sentenced under the Insolvency Act, was found guilty of four charges by a jury at Southwark crown court last month but acquitted of a further 20 counts relating to his 2017 bankruptcy. He had faced a maximum prison sentence of seven years.
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He was handed a two-year suspended sentence for tax evasion and attempted tax evasion worth €1.7m (about £1.4m) in Germany in 2002. Referring to that conviction, the judge said: “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.”
Huntercombe prison was originally built as an internment camp. The site opened as a prison after the second world war and was a borstal until 1983. In 2000, it became a prison for male juveniles aged 15 to 18. In November 2010, it became an adult category C training prison and since March 2012 it has held solely category C foreign national prisoners. It holds about 480 adults.
