Barcelona star Lionel Messi will appeal and vowed to clear his name after a court in Spain on Wednesday sentenced him and his father to 21 months in jail for tax fraud, the player's lawyers said. The prison sentences are likely to be suspended as is common in Spain for first offences for non-violent crimes carrying a sentence of less than two years.
The Argentine's lawyers feel an appeal would eventually succeed in persuading the court that Messi and his father have behaved correctly, the player's representatives told AFP in a statement. "The most recent laws from the supreme court on the matter that concerns us would seem to prove the argument of the defence," Messi's lawyers Enrique Bacigalupo and Javier Sanchez-Vera asserted.
Earlier Wednesday, the Barcelona court had found the Argentina international and his father Jorge Horacio Messi guilty of using companies in Belize, Britain, Switzerland and Uruguay to avoid paying taxes on 4.16 million euros of Messi's income earned from his image rights from 2007-09. The income related to Messi's image rights that was allegedly hidden includes endorsement deals with Danone, Adidas, Pepsi-Cola, Procter & Gamble and the Kuwait Food Company.
The court found Messi and his father, who has managed his son's affairs since he was a child, guilty of tax fraud and ruled that for each of those three years they should serve a sentence of seven months. Messi, 29, a five-time world player of the year winner, was also fined 2.09 million euros while his father was fined 1.6 million euros. They can appeal the decision to Spain's Supreme Court and that is what the pair's lawyers indicated on Wednesday they would, saying they felt confident an appeal would succeed. Messi told the court during the four-day trial that wrapped up on June 4 that he trusted his father with his finances and "knew nothing" about how his wealth was managed.
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