Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti, accused of having hid part of his income rights of the Spanish tax authorities, assured on Wednesday (2) before a court that never thought of committing fraud, and that it was the club who proposed this form of remuneration.
Ancelotti agreed to receive 6 million euros (US $ 6.5 million) net for four seasons, of which he fulfilled two, and was the club, he sustains, who proposed to receive 15% in imaging rights.
“When Madrid suggests this to me, I put Real Madrid in contact with my English advisor. I never come in it because I had never received that way,” said the Italian coach at the beginning of the hearing at a Madrid court.
“All the players had, Mourinho had it,” he said about one of his predecessors at the Real Madrid bank, who was sentenced to one year in prison, suspended after being culprit of fiscal fraud in 2019.
The first round of the trial lasted about two hours and will be resumed on Thursday at 9:30 am (local time). In addition to the accused Ancelotti, they declared as witnesses their stepdaughter Chloe McClay – in Los Angeles’s video conferencing -, his son Davide Ancelotti, and his wife Mariann Barrena.
Most of the questions to his family aimed to know where the coach was after being fired from Madrid in May 2015, because only those who spent more than 183 days during the natural year in Spain should make the income statement.
Ancelotti, 65, faces a sentence of the four-year-old prosecutor’s office and nine months in prison for defrauding more than one million euros ($ 1.1 million) in image rights in 2014 and 2015, during his first stage directing Real Madrid (2013-2015), to which he returned in 2021 (so far).
“I never realized that something was not correct,” before 2018, when the prosecutor opened an investigation, the coach added.
According to the Spanish tax administration, Ancelotti declared his income as Real Madrid technician in 2014 and 2015, but not from image rights and other sources, such as some real estate properties.
Imaging rights income were, according to the prosecutor, 1.2 million euros in 2014 (US $ 1.3 million) and 2.9 million (US $ 3 million) in 2015.
For the prosecution, Ancelotti’s omissions in his tax statements were volunteer, as the Italian coach “resorted to a ‘complex’ and ‘confusing’ funds and companies interposed to channel the collection of imaging rights.”
During his statement on Wednesday, the Italian coach argued, however, that he was unaware of being doing something wrong or that the company created to tax image rights allowed him to pay less taxes.
“At that moment all the players and coaches had, it seemed to me a correct thing,” Ancelotti said during a statement when he sighing on one occasion against the prosecutor’s technical questions.
“Puff… is asking me about a theme I don’t know,” he said.
The precedents of Messi, Ronaldo and Shakira
Other stars had problems with the Spanish tax authorities before Ancelotti, but none had to go to prison, an enlightening precedent for the Italian.
Thus, Argentine player Lionel Messi, then a big star of FC Barcelona, was sentenced in 2016 to 21 months in prison and the payment of more than 5 million euros, although he has not served the penalty due to Spanish legislation that allows to suspend convictions under two years for first offenses.
In 2018, the Portuguese player Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid paid a fine of 18.8 million euros and received a two -year conviction, which he did not comply with not having criminal records.
Colombian singer Shakira, an ex-wife of the player Gerard Piqué, also reached an agreement in November 2023 to avoid trial for fiscal fraud.
The agreement included a sentence of three years in prison and a fine of 7.3 million euros for defrauding 14.5 million euros between 2012 and 2014.
Finally, in a case very similar to that of Ancelotti, former Real Madrid player and Spanish national team Xabi Alonso faced charges of tax fraud for the assignment of his image rights to an abroad company, but was acquitted.
