The Provincial Court in Barcelona, Spain recently found Lionel Messi and his father, Jorge Horacio Messi, guilty of three counts of tax fraud and were sentenced to 21 months in jail. However, neither of the two will most likely be actually placed in prison.
The two men denied that they intentionally evaded taxes. Lionel Messi previously admitted that he signed several documents without reading their contents and that he visited a notary's office to proceed to set up a company to handle his finances, although he did not fully understand the situation.
Subsequently, the state prosecutor said that his claims of lack of understanding of how the system functions were unacceptable. Since the news surfaced in 2013, the Lionel and Horacio have reportedly paid close to $20 million in taxes, arrears and extra charges.
Early in July 2016, Lionel and Horacio Messi were charged with tax evasion by prosecutors, claiming that they used tax havens in Uruguay and Belize, and shell companies in Switzerland and the United Kingdom, to avoid paying taxes, which totaled about $4.5 million from their image rights earnings between 2007 and 2009.
Independent stated that according to Eva Blazquez, who was responsible for Argentina captain's tax declarations, Lionel Messi did not have knowledge over these, and that the final supervision was made by the client, Horacio Messi.
Lionel's father also emphasized that his son was not aware of the details of his contracts and explained that he thought it was not necessary to inform the latter about everything.
The Barcelona court fined Messi around $2.2 million, while Horacio was fined about $1.6 million for their violations. Under Spanish law, a tax prison sentence lasting less than two years can be served under probation, which means that Lionel and Horacio Messi will not be seeing the confines of a jail cell. The court added that their sentence can be appealed via the Spanish Supreme Court.
ESPN FC revealed that Barcelona announced their full support to their star forward. The club stated that they, together with the Government prosecution service, considers the player who corrected his position with the Spanish Tax Office, is not criminally responsible.
FC Barcelona added that they continue to be at the disposal of Lionel and Horacio Messi to support him in any action that he may take to protect his honesty and legal interests.
Lionel Messi reportedly earns about $81.4 million annually, making him Forbes' No. 2 highest-paid athlete in the world in 2016. More updates and details are expected soon.