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The Real Madrid coach, Carlo Ancelotti, will appear in court on Wednesday to stand trial on charges of defrauding Spain’s tax office of more than €1m (£836,857) in undeclared earnings from image rights in 2014 and 2015.
Prosecutors, who are seeking a jail term of four years and nine months, allege that the 65-year-old former Chelsea and Everton manager used shell companies outside Spain to create “opacity vis-a-vis the Spanish treasury … concealing the real beneficiary of the income from the exploitation of his image rights”.
They claim that, despite his status as a Spanish resident for tax purposes, the coach declared only his personal earnings from the club and omitted the income he received from the sale of his image rights. The prosecutors allege that he failed to pay a total of €1,062,079 in tax on the sale of those rights, which amounted to €1.24m in 2014 and €2.96m the following year. The trial is expected to last two days.
Ancelotti, the most successful manager in Champions League history, has denied the charges and insisted he is keen to have his day in court. “I have total confidence in the law and in justice,” he told reporters last Friday. “I’m not worried but I am obviously annoyed if they say that I’ve committed fraud, but, once again, I have total confidence in justice. I’m really looking forward to testifying on Wednesday.”
Ancelotti is not the only high-profile football figure to find himself pursued by Spain’s tax authorities in recent years. In July 2016, Lionel Messi and his father, Jorge, were sentenced to 21 months in prison for evading tax on Lionel’s image rights during his time at Barcelona, with more than €4m owed in back payments. Both were spared jail time because sentences of under two years in Spain do not have to be served, and neither man had a criminal record.
Six years ago Cristiano Ronaldo admitted committing tax fraud while playing for Real Madrid and agreed to pay an €18.8m (£16.5m) fine after striking a deal with prosecutors and tax authorities in return for a 23-month suspended prison sentence. In February 2019 José Mourinho was given a one-year suspended prison sentence and agreed to pay €2.2m (£1.9m) in fines after admitting tax fraud while he was the manager of Real Madrid.
The following year, the Atlético Madrid forward Diego Costa paid a fine of €543,208 after pleading guilty to defrauding the tax authorities of more than €1m by not declaring payments of more than €5.15m from his 2014 move to Chelsea.
The Colombian singer and philanthropist Shakira was also the subject of lengthy tax proceedings in Spain that made global headlines and culminated in her reaching a settlement with prosecutors to avoid trial over charges that she failed to pay €14.5m (£12.7m) in Spanish income tax between 2012 and 2014. As part of the deal struck in November 2023, she accepted the charges and a fine of 50% of the amount owed, which was more than €7.3m. She also accepted a further fine of €438,000 to avoid a three-year prison sentence.
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In July 2019, Shakira’s then partner, Gerard Piqué, was ordered to pay €2.1m in tax arrears and fines for tax evasion relating to image rights payments when the centre-back was playing for Barcelona. The fine was annulled two years later by Spain’s supreme court.
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