MADRID: Portuguese football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo has been ordered to pay up 18.8 million euros ($21.44 million) by a regional court in Spain on four counts of tax evasion during the 2011-2014 period, amounting to 14.7 million euros ($16.7 million), when he was an active player for Real Madrid.
Ronaldo has been accused in the past of having used shell companies outside Spain to hide the income he made from image rights. Agencia EFE reports that Ronaldo will not be required to serve jail time of a minimum of 23 months since he had arrived at a deal with the prosecution.
Ronaldo’s former teammate at Real Madrid, Xabi Alonso was also in court at the same time. He has been charged of tax fraud as well, worth 2 million euros ($2.3 million) from 2010-12. However, unlike Ronaldo, he hasn’t pleaded guilty for the crime nor committed to a deal with authorities and is likely to be sentenced to prison up to five years.
Besides Ronaldo and Alonso, big names in the sport such as Lionel Messi, Neymar and Marcelo Viera have also been framed of evading tax over the years during their time in Spain. This has largely been due to the government’s rule of tweaking the tax exemption law since 2010.
