A 21-month jail term handed down last year to Barcelona and Argentina footballer Lionel Messi has been confirmed by Spain`s Supreme Court, but he is unlikely to go to prison, reports BBC.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Messi and his father Jorge, who manages his finances, were both convicted in 2016 of defrauding Spain of \u20ac4.1m (\u00a33.5m; $4.6m) in taxes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jorge Messi`s jail term was reduced because he paid some of the taxes. In Spain, prison terms of under two years can be served under probation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The case will now return to the court in Barcelona that handed down the original judgement.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lionel Messi, a five-time world footballer of the year, has denied any involvement and told his trial in June 2016: “I only worried about playing football.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But in its decision on Wednesday, the court said: “It defies logic to concede that someone who earns a large income does not know that he must pay taxes on it.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Both men were originally convicted of three counts of fraud, for using tax havens in Belize and Uruguay between 2007 and 2009, and were also given heavy fines.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
They were found guilty of resorting to fictitious companies to evade Spanish taxes on income from companies using Lionel Messi`s image rights.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jorge Messi`s jail term was reduced from 21 months to 15 by the Supreme Court to take into account the money he had since handed to the tax authorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 21-month jail term handed down last year to Barcelona and Argentina footballer Lionel Messi has been confirmed by Spain`s Supreme Court, but he is unlikely to go to prison, reports BBC. Messi and his father Jorge, who manages his finances, were both convicted in 2016 of defrauding Spain of €4.1m (£3.5m; $4.6m) in taxes. Jorge Messi`s jail term was reduced because he paid some of the taxes. In Spain, prison terms of under two years can be served under probation. The case will now return to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7151"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7154,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7151\/revisions\/7154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.banglanewsus.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}