WHEN people say “diplomatic service”, they seldom mean an envoy who can slam an ace over the net at 130 miles per hour. Yet Boris Becker, a German former tennis star who could once do just that, told a London court on June 14th that he should be excused from proceedings because he has diplomatic immunity.
After Mr Becker was declared bankrupt last year he faced claims to his assets from a private bank. Instead of coughing up, Mr Becker said that he is, in fact, a representative of the Central African Republic (CAR), a failed state wedged between Congo and Chad. This, Mr Becker said, should end the “farce” of his being pursued by creditors.
In fact the farce had only just begun. On June 19th officials in the CAR’s foreign ministry told AFP, a newswire, that the diplomatic passport was a fake, possibly from a batch of passports stolen in 2014. Mr Becker had claimed to be a sports envoy for the country, working out of its...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa https://ift.tt/2KaB9Fq
EmoticonEmoticon