Red card: Messi convicted of tax evasion

MADRID: Barcelona’s Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi was sentenced on Wednesday to 21 months in prison and fined 2 million euros ($2.2 million) after being found

MADRID: Barcelona’s Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi was sentenced on Wednesday to 21 months in prison and fined 2 million euros ($2.2 million) after being found guilty of three counts of tax fraud, although it is unlikely he will serve time.

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The Barcelona court handed the same sentence to the player’s father, Jorge, with a 1.5 million euro fine. Both defendants have around five days to appeal to the supreme court, the Barcelona court said in its statement.

Spanish law is such that any sentence under two years for a non-violent crime rarely requires a defendant without previous convictions to serve jail time. A spokeswoman for the court confirmed Messi was unlikely to be imprisoned.

Messi, 29, and his father defrauded the Spanish tax office of almost 4.2 million euros between 2007 and 2009 by using a web of shell companies to evade taxes on income from the player’s image rights, the court said in a written ruling.

The companies — with names such as Sport Consultants and Sport Enterprises — were based in tax havens such as Belize, Uruguay and Switzerland where legislation kept the identities of their owners secret, according to the ruling.

Messi, five-time World Player of the Year, admitted during the trial to signing contracts protecting his image rights but said he had no knowledge he was defrauding the Spanish state. He said his father had control over his financial affairs, but the court said on Wednesday that this was not enough to avoid charges.

Messi, who has held Spanish nationality since 2005, and his father had already paid 5 million euros to the tax authorities as a “corrective” measure after formal investigations were opened.

The footballer is 10th on Forbes Magazine’s list of the world’s highest-earning athletes over the past decade, with an estimated income of $350 million during this period.