LONDON, 13 Nov. (dpa/EP) –
Former German tennis player Boris Becker, currently in prison in the UK for bankruptcy offences, could soon be deported to Germany, the British newspaper The Sun reported on Sunday.
According to the tabloid, Becker, 54, was placed on a fast-track program that allows foreign prisoners to be released well before completing their sentence. “He was assigned to a program that will ensure that he is home for Christmas,” a prison source reveals to the newspaper.
Becker, who lived in London, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison at the end of April for hiding assets and property worth 2.5 million pounds -2.88 million euros- to avoid paying his debts after declaring himself in bankruptcy in 2017.
He spent months in Huntercombe prison in west London. Under British law, prisoners can be released on parole if they have served at least half of their sentence. In Becker’s case, it would be 15 months on July 29, 2023.
But The Sun notes that the new release and deportation program aims to help reduce pressure on Britain’s overcrowded prisons. Based on this information, any foreign prisoner “who can be released and deported up to 12 months before their earliest release date” can be included in this program.
A spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior pointed out that “any foreign national who is sentenced to prison for a crime can be included in the deportation program at the earliest possible date.”