Lionel Messi sentenced to 21 months in prison after being found guilty of tax fraud



Lionel Messi and his father Jorge can serve their sentence under probation Credit: Rex

Ben Rumsby

6 July 2016 • 4:35pm

Lionel Messi has been sentenced to almost two years in prison for tax fraud – but looks set to escape jail time for the offence.

The greatest player of his – and arguably any – generation and his father were both handed 21-month sentences by a Catalan court over their failure to pay £3.4 million of tax on Messi’s image rights.

Under Spanish law, sentences of less than two years for first offences are usually suspended and neither the Barcelona star nor father Jorge are expected to serve time behind bars.

However, they were fined £1.7 million and £1.3m respectively by the court, having already paid a £4.2m “corrective payment” back in 2013 after filing incomplete tax returns for the years 2006 to 2009.

'I knew nothing', says Lionel Messi at tax fraud trial

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According to the prosecutor’s office for tax crimes in Catalonia, the sale of Messi’s image rights had been hidden using a complex web of shell companies in Uruguay, Belize, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

The 29-year-old has always denied any knowledge of his tax affairs, saying he “only worried about playing football”, while his father claimed he left it all up to financial advisers.

But summing up the case, the presiding judge, Mercedes Armas Galve, wrote of the five-time world player of the year: “[His] avoidable ignorance, which was derived from indifference, is not an error, and it does not remove responsibility.

“The information that the accused avoided having was, in reality, within his reach via trustworthy and accessible sources.”

It is unclear whether Messi or his father will accept the verdict or lodge an appeal with Spain’s supreme court.

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