Tennis star Sanchez Vicario escapes prison over 6.6 million euro debt

Former world No.1 and four-time Grand Slam winner Arantxa Sanchez Vicario was handed a two-year suspended prison sentence for concealing assets to avoid paying a debt to a bank, the Spanish courts said on Wednesday.

Sanchez Vicario, 52, and her ex-husband Josep Santacana were also ordered to pay 6.6 million euros to the Luxembourg bank with which they ran up the debt that they tried to avoid paying.

Santacana, who managed Sanchez Vicario’s accounts, was given a longer sentence of three years and three months in prison, Catalonia’s High Court said in a statement following the trial in Barcelona.

Three other defendants were sentenced to one year and three months in prison, plus a fine.

The sentence states that “the defendant… had and has always had sufficient assets to meet her debt and that, by acts of sale and evasion of seizure actions, she had prevented its recovery”.

Sanchez Vicario won three French Open titles as well as the 1994 US Open, spending 12 weeks as world No.1 in 1995.

She was also twice a finalist at the Australian Open and Wimbledon.

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AFP

(NAMPA / AFP)