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Messi absent as tax trial starts

By Daily Sports on June 1, 2016

Football superstar Lionel Messi will this week tell a Spanish court that he leaves all of his financial affairs to his father, as he pleads not guilty to charges of tax fraud.

The Argentina and FC Barcelona star, who was absent from the opening day of his trial in Barcelona on Tuesday, is expected to tell the court on Thursday that he has absolutely no knowledge of his own financial affairs.

“I never look at the money side. That’s something my dad deals with and I trust in him,” Messi told the judge investigating the case before it went to trial.

The player’s father, Jorge Horacio Messi, is also on trial, with both accused of defrauding the Spanish state to the tune of €4.16 million of unpaid tax on earnings from the sale of Messi’s image rights between 2007 and 2009.

Authorities allege that they used tax havens in Belize and Uruguay to conceal the earnings.

Messi had planned to be in Barcelona for the start of the trial but a lower back injury he suffered during a friendly against Honduras last week prevented him from doing so, defence lawyer Javier Sanchez-Vera said at the start of the proceedings.

Both men face possible jail sentences of 22 and a half months, although in Spain first-time offenders usually see sentences of less than two years suspended.

The 28-year-old Messi’s defence will rest on his complete ignorance of all financial and contractual matters.

“I never read the contracts. I don’t know what I’m signing,” he told a judge in 2013, according to a transcript of the interrogation published by the Spanish newspaper El Periódico.

Messi said that off the field he followed orders by his father when it came to business decisions such as which products to advertise, and that he had no idea where his payments were deposited.

“I trust my dad. He’s the one who manages things for me, and I do what he tells me,” the player said.

Messi claimed that he never read any documents relating to money or companies in which he may be named as an administrator, apart from a balance sheet once a year.

“At the end of the year I read the summary of what I have, of what I have made during the year. But I don’t ask where the money comes from. I know the club pays me and that’s it."

A glance at his 2015 balance sheet, as drawn up by Forbes, would tell Messi that he earned $74 million last year, including $22m in endorsements.

Messi has already paid €5m to cover the shortfall for 2007, 2008 and 2009. He has also made an extraordinary tax payment of €10m in relation to earnings from 2010 and 2011.

After winning a league and Cup double with Barcelona, the five-time World Player of the Year is due to join his Argentina teammates for the Copa America in the United States.

Argentina take on defending champions Chile in their first game of the tournament at Santa Clara's Levi's Stadium, the home of the San Francisco 49ers, in California on June 6.

•Culled from theIndependent.co.uk. Photo shows Lionel Messi

Source Daily Sports

Posted June 1, 2016