Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has been handed a suspended one-year prison sentence over tax evasion claims
The Portuguese manager was accused of defrauding the Spanish Tax Office of €3.3million (£2.9m) between 2011 and 2012 while in charge of Real Madrid.
Mourinho was accused of using offshore company accounts in Ireland, the British Virgin Islands and New Zealand to conceal income from image rights in 2011.
He is not going to spend any time in jail as Spanish law on the matter stipulates ‘that a sentence of under two years for a first offence can be served on probation’.
After appearing in court in 2017, the Manchester United manager said “I did not answer, I did not argue. I paid and signed with the state that I am in compliance and the case is closed,”
READ: Alexis Sanchez Gets 16-Month Jail Sentence For Tax Fraud
Mourinho will not be the first high profile football name that has faced tax problems in Spain with Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Alexis Sanchez have all had to deal with tax cases in recent times.
In Ronaldo’s case, he was alleged to have defrauded the Spanish Treasury of €14.7m (£13m/$16.6m) in taxes between 2011 and 2014
For Messi, he was found guilty of defrauding the Spanish Treasury to the tune of €4.1m (£3m/£4.6m) between 2007 and 2009. At the time, he was given a 21-month jail sentence, but this was changed to a fine of €252,000 (£226,000/$291,000) by the Spanish courts.
All of these issues mostly came from income from image rights with the Spanish courts arguing that the football personalities hid these earnings.
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