Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti could be facing up to four years in prison over tax fraud and failing to disclose earnings.
How much has Ancelotti skipped paying?
Ancelotti has been charged with having defrauded the treasury. It’s understood Ancelotti didn’t pay the necessary tax amount during 2013 and 2015 during his first spell at Real Madrid.
The total amount skipped is reportedly over £900k. Ancelotti allegedly declared his earnings from his Real Madrid salary, but is accused of having omitted money earned from his image rights, instead transferring the sum to other entities.
The total sum from the years 2014 and 2015, reportedly saw Ancelotti fail to declare £33ok in the first year and £577k in the second year.
Ancelotti’s crimes
Ancelotti gave his image rights to Vapia Limited, in 2013, for a period of 10 years. The fee paid was £21m and this was shortly after he signed a three-year contract at Real Madrid.
Ancelotti then appointed himself at the helm of the company, ‘granting him the maximum powers of action to manage his image rights’, before later reducing the length of the period covered to three years and dropping the sale price to £854,000.
He then transferred 50% of his image rights to Real Madrid in a private contract, with the other 50% being held in an ‘unnamed’ and ‘undetermined’ company named Vapia LLP, which was domiciled in London.
During his time at Real Madrid, Ancelotti is claimed to have ‘omitted all income corresponding to the exploitation of his image rights’ when filing his self-assessed tax declarations, which in 2014 amounted to £1.1m and £2.5m in the 2015 financial year.
Prosecutors claim
The prosecutors wrote a letter that provided a statement on the Ancelotti allegations. It read: ‘Pursuing opacity in the face of the Spanish Public Treasury and the concealment of the real beneficiary of his income from his image rights, so that neither he himself, nor any of the said companies, would have to pay taxes on the large amounts received in Spain or outside our country’.
‘In this way, the accused used the company Vapia LLP so that it formally presented itself to Real Madrid as the owner of the image rights even though it had not even been formally attributed them, since the aforementioned transfer contract of 1 July 2013 was with Vapia Limited.’
Will Ancelotti go to prison?
Ancelotti has been charged with two crimes against Spain’s Public Treasury by the Provincial Prosecutor’s Officer in Madrid. The prosecutors has requested Ancelotti be sentenced to four years and nine months in prison if he’s found guilty.
However, should the sentence be reduced to less than two years, Ancelotti could yet serve a suspended sentence, due to him being a first-time offender for a financial crime.
When do Real Madrid next play?
Real Madrid host RB Leipzig in the Champions League on Wednesday night. The 14-time champions have a 1-0 aggregate lead. The game gets underway at 8pm and TNT Sports are broadcasting the match.
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