Arantxa Sanchez Vicario spent two decades as one of the fiercest competitors women's tennis has produced — four Grand Slam singles titles, the world No. 1 ranking and five Olympic Games worth of medals. She says none of it prepared her for what happened to the money she made along the way.
The Spaniard, now 54, says roughly $41 million (about €36 million) of her fortune has vanished, and she places the blame squarely on her ex-husband and former financial manager, Josep Santacana. The pair married in 2008, share two children and divorced in 2019.
"I focused on playing tennis and never handled my own financial affairs, because I simply didn't know how," she has said of the arrangement. "I trusted my husband completely — and the money vanished."
That trust became a criminal matter. In January 2024 a court in Barcelona found both Sanchez Vicario and Santacana guilty of fraud, ruling that the couple had concealed assets to dodge debts owed to Banque de Luxembourg.
Santacana, described in the case as the entrepreneur who ran the couple's finances, was handed the harsher punishment: three years and three months in prison. Sanchez Vicario was sentenced to two years, but as a first-time offender the term was suspended after she agreed to help repay what was owed.
The court also ordered the pair to pay a combined €6.6 million (roughly $7.1 million) in damages to the bank. Sanchez Vicario says she now hands over half of her earnings to chip away at that debt.
She has continued to present herself as a victim of the arrangement rather than a willing participant, insisting she was kept in the dark about the family's finances throughout the marriage. "I just expect the truth to be told and this to be over," she has said of the ordeal, which she describes as psychologically exhausting.
It is not the first time Sanchez Vicario's finances have landed her in legal trouble. In 2009, Spain's Supreme Court fined her $5.9 million over unpaid taxes from 1989 to 1993, a period in which she had claimed residency in Andorra rather than Spain.
None of it erases the résumé that made her one of the sport's most decorated figures: French Open titles in 1989, 1994 and 1998, a US Open crown in 1994, the year she also reached world No. 1, and medals across the 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta Olympics before retiring in 2002.
For now, the case that once defined her career has been replaced by one defined by a bank ledger — and a fortune she says she never saw slip away until it was already gone.
