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Why was Ancelotti convicted of tax fraud?
Former Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti has been sentenced to one year in jail by a Spanish court for tax fraud related to earnings in 2014. While the Italian coach won’t serve prison time, since the sentence is under two years and he has no prior criminal record,the conviction has drawn widespread attention.
Spanish prosecutors accused the 66-year-old of using shell companies to hide income earned from image rights during his first tenure with Real Madrid. They initially sought four years and nine months of imprisonment, alleging that Ancelotti failed to declare more than one million euros in earnings for the years 2014 and 2015.
At his trial in April, Ancelotti denied any deliberate wrongdoing, claiming he was unaware that collecting income through image rights agreements would lead to tax evasion. Despite his defense, the court found that he showed a “conscious desire to evade the payment of taxes” by exploiting “opaque structures and entities in tax havens.”
What were the court’s findings?
The court sentenced Ancelotti to pay a fine of €386,361 (around $452,821). It emphasized that the financial structures he used lacked real economic logic and were “blatantly fraudulent.” The judge, however, acquitted him for the 2015 tax year, citing insufficient proof that Ancelotti was a Spanish resident at the time.
Ancelotti joins a growing list of football icons entangled in Spain’s ongoing crackdown on tax fraud. Former Real Madrid manager José Mourinho received a one-year suspended sentence in 2019, while both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were previously convicted but avoided jail due to being first-time offenders.
By Yockshard Enyendi
