MADRID.- The Prosecutor’s Office maintained its four -year and nine -month prison request for the coach of the real Madrid, Carlo Ancelottifor having hidden part of his income to the Spanish treasury, at the end of the trial held in a court in Madrid.
The Public Ministry-which in Spain usually makes public their requests before the oral view and can ratify or modify them at the end-asked to condemn the Italian coach for having fraud more than one million euros in image rights in 2014 and 2015, during their first stage directing Real Madrid (2013-2015), which he returned in 2021 (until now).
“We understand that the facts of fraud, concealment and omission concur,” said the prosecutor in his conclusions.
Ancelotti “alleges an ignorance to which he can hardly be hosted,” he said.
After two days of sessions, the trial was seen for sentence this Thursday.
In his conclusions, Ancelotti’s lawyer, Carlos Zabala, said, however, that Real Madrid was after “the contractual nonsense” that generated the problems of his client, by wanting to pay him a part of his salary through image rights to access “a more comfortable taxation.”
“Mr. Ancelotti was not very clear about what he was signing,” said Zabala, who requested the acquittal of his client.
The lawyer also estimated that the case could have been resolved by the administrative route and accused the Spanish treasury of having wanted to submit the technician to a “public prison.”
“They all had it”
During his Wednesday statement, Ancelotti, 65, said he never thought about committing fraud.
The Italian coach agreed to charge 6 million euros (6.5 million dollars) net for four seasons, of which he finally turned two, and it was the club, he said, who proposed to collect 15% in image rights.
“When Madrid suggests this to me, I put Real Madrid in contact with my English advisor. I never entered this because I had never charged like that,” he said.
“I have never realized that something was not correct,” before 2018, when the Public Ministry opened an investigation, he added.
“All players had it, (José) Mourinho had this,” he said about one of his predecessors on the Real Madrid bench, who was sentenced to a year in prison in suspense after declaring himself guilty of fiscal fraud in 2019.
According to the Spanish fiscal administration, Ancelotti declared his income as a Real Madrid coach in 2014 and 2015, but not those from image rights and other sources, such as some real estate properties.
Image rights revenue were, according to the Public Ministry, of 1.2 million euros in 2014 (1.3 million dollars) and 2.9 million euros (3 million dollars) in 2015.
For the Prosecutor’s Office, these omissions in their tax statements were voluntary, since the Italian coach “went to a ‘complex’ and ‘confusing’ network of trusts and companies filed to channel the collection of image rights.”
Messi, Cristiano, Shakira
Ancelotti is not the first star that has problems with the Spanish treasury, although none had to go to jail.
The Argentine footballer Lionel Messi, then Astro of FC Barcelona, was sentenced in 2016 to 21 months in jail and the payment of more than 5 million euros, but did not fulfill the penalty due to Spanish legislation that allows to suspend sentences under two years for first crimes.
In 2018, Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo, from Real Madrid, paid a fine of 18.8 million euros and received a two -year prison sentence, which did not comply by not having a history.
The Colombian singer Shakira, ex -wife of the footballer Gerard Piqué, also reached an agreement in November 2023 to avoid a trial for tax fraud.
Finally, in a case very similar to that of Ancelotti, the former Real Madrid player, Xabi Alonso, faced accusations of fiscal fraud for the transfer of his image rights to a company based abroad, but was acquitted.
