Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti is up to almost five years in prison when the Spanish prosecutors are in the way of tax fraud allegations in the Spanish capital in front of a court.
The fees refer to image payments during his first magic in Bernabeu a decade ago what the tax authorities had hidden in overseas -shell companies. The public prosecutor has requested a prison sentence of four years and nine months as well as a fine of € 3.2 million if Ancelotti is found guilty.
Ancelotti argued that he had primarily dealt with securing a certain content when he considered it “quite normal” when Madrid offered to pay 15% from the image rights. He said that this was also the case with the players and the former coach Jose Mourinho.
Ancelotti insisted that he passed the matter to a consultant in the UK and thought nothing of it. It is believed that as a Spanish resident he only explained the personal income of Real Madrid and not the € 4.2 million from the sale of image rights in 2014 and 2015.
“I have never taken care of image rights. I was only cared for for three years to get the 6-Mio.-euro network, and I never found that something was wrong and I had not received any notification that I was examined by tax lawyers,” the 65-year-old told the court.
“I thought it was quite normal. I got in touch with my British consultant and didn’t think about it because everything seemed right. I never thought that a fraud could be committed. But since I am here, I think that things were not really done.”
Even if it is found to be guilty, the likelihood that Ancelotti actually serves the prison period still seems low.
Spain’s tax authority has repeatedly convicted against top-class football stars in recent years-in one thing in one thing Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in 2016 and 2019.
Both received suspended prison terms between 21 and 23 months, whereby the judicial system of Spain is not obliged that such convictions are delivered after two years. In any case, the requested sentence was longer than what was finally passed on.