$72m fortune gone! Parents left me broke, tennis great claims

Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario. Photo / Getty Images

Former tennis star Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario has claimed in a memoir that her parents stole the $NZ72m she earned as a player, leaving her broke.

The four-time Grand Slam champion, who retired in 2002, made the claims in her memoir titled Arantxa, Vamos! Memoirs of a struggle, a life and a woman, Eurosport.com.au reports.

The tennis hall of fame inductee spent 17 years on the pro tour in which she claims she earned £10.7m in prize money and more than double that in endorsements, but says her parents' control over the money left her with nothing.

"My parents made me suffer a lot," she told Spanish magazine La Otra Conica.

"My parents left me with nothing and now I am indebted to the (tax authorities) and I will not be quiet.

"My mother decided on my hair, my clothes ... When I bought something on my own, she rarely liked it."

"Today, I am without resources."

Sanchez-Vicario's battle with tax authorities has been ongoing. In 2009 the Spanish Supreme Court ordered the 40-year-old to pay around $NZ7m in income tax after rejecting claims that she was a resident of Andorra and not Spain from 1989 to 1993.

Sanchez-Vicario's mother has hit back writing in Spanish newspaper El Mundo: "Our daughter Arantxa had gone a step further in her desire to hurt us and humiliate us," Eurosport.com.au reports.

"As we read the article that was published we sunk deeper and deeper into despair, not because of all the lies in it, which came one after another, but more because we realised the actual state of our daughter.

"For 20 years, we put everything aside and forfeited our lives and our marriage for her career.

"I personally escorted her from a very young age to every tournament, leaving my husband and my other children behind.

"Then my husband Emilio quit his job to accompany her and help her.

"We tried to do the best we could. Clearly we failed her...we are accused of leaving her in ruins with the type of a grudge and resentment worthy of your worst enemy."

- HERALD ONLINE