Lionel Messi to serve 21 months in prison over tax fraud

Barcelona and Argentina footballer Lionel Messi has sentenced to 21 months in prison for tax fraud.

His father, Jorge Messi, was also given a jail term for defrauding Spain of €4.1m between 2007 and 2009.

Messi and his father were found guilty of three counts of tax fraud in Wednesday’s ruling by the court in Barcelona, Spain.

Messi was fined about €2m and his father €1.5m.
During the trial, prosecutors said tax havens in Belize and Uruguay were used to conceal huge earnings from his lucrative image rights.

Messi, 29, said he “knew nothing” about his financial affairs because he was busy “playing football”, adding that he signed documents without reading them.

He told the court last month: “The truth is no, the truth is no, I didn’t know.

“As my dad explained earlier I just dedicated myself to playing football, I put my trust in my father, in the lawyers who had decided to manage this thing.”

But a judge disagreed and found both men complicit in the crime, which concerned Messi’s image rights with companies including Adidas, Pepsi-Cola, Danone, Procter and Gamble, Banco Sabadell and the Kuwait Food Company.

Government prosecutor Mario Maza told the court the pair could not prove their innocence and were not able to show that the player did not have at least some knowledge of the corporate structures created to lower his tax burden in Spain.

Asking for jail sentences of 22 months for both men, he noted that in particular the player “knew more than he made it appear in court”, adding that both father and son had “showed no credibility” as witnesses.