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| The Spanish authorities started to investigate Cristiano Ronaldo's business dealings four years ago. |
MADRID — Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese soccer
star, will pay about $22 million in back taxes and fines as part of a
settlement reached with the Spanish tax authorities over undeclared earnings
from his advertising contracts.
The settlement for Ronaldo, 33, follows
a preliminary agreement reached last month, shortly before he played for his
country in the 2018 World Cup in Russia and then moved clubs and countries,
switching from Real Madrid to Juventus in Italy for a fee of about $110
million.
The settlement of 19 million euros
includes a fine of €3.2 million for defrauding Spain of €5.7 million in taxes.
Ronaldo will also have
to pay the back taxes, as well as interest charges on the amounts that he
failed to make on schedule from 2011 to 2014, when he was playing for Real
Madrid.
The player will not serve his prison sentence of two
years because under Spanish law, first-time tax offenders convicted of a
financial crime are spared prison if the sentence is two years or less.
Ronaldo is one of several players who
have been investigated by the Spanish authorities and then accused of using
offshore companies to avoid paying taxes on their advertising contracts.
In 2016, Lionel Messi, the Argentine
star who plays for Barcelona and who is Ronaldo’s primary rival on the global
soccer stage, was also convicted in Spain, along with his father, of failing to
disclose some of his advertising contracts. They were sentenced to 21 months in
prison, but because of the same sentencing guidelines neither served any time
behind bars.
The sentence for Messi came three years after he and his father had made
a voluntary additional payment of €5 million to cover unpaid taxes as well as
interest charges.
The Spanish authorities started to investigate
Ronaldo’s business deals four years ago. Last year, tax prosecutors charged him
with fraud in connection with €14.76 million earned from 2011 to 2014.
He was accused of channeling millions of
his advertising revenues to undeclared bank accounts via a network of offshore
companies, including one established in the British Virgin Islands shortly
after he joined Real Madrid in 2009.
In a court appearance last July, Ronaldo denied any wrongdoing and
suggested that he was being prosecuted because he was a high-profile figure. “If
I weren’t Cristiano Ronaldo, I wouldn’t be here,” he told the judge.
Photo Credits: Massimo Pinca/Reuters
From The New York Times (edited)
