By Andrew Warshaw
June 19 – Lionel Messi’s excellent start to the World Cup has been given a further boost off the field with reports that charges of tax evasion against the Argentine skipper are being dropped.
However his father, Jorge Horacio Messi, is reportedly still under investigation for an alleged €4 million in unpaid taxes from Messi’s image rights between 2006-09.
Messi’s representatives confirmed in a statement that the state prosecutor has dropped the case against the Barcelona striker.
“(The prosecutor’s request shows) the player was unaware and on the margin of the financial and business structure that his financial advisers had created to manage his income and obligatory fiscal payments,” the statement said.
Last year Messi appeared along with his father at a court in Spain to answer accusations of evading €4.2 million in false returns for the years 2006 to 2009.
The four-times World Player of the Year, and his father were suspected of using companies abroad – in Belize and Uruguay – to sell Messi’s image rights, thereby circumventing tax obligations in Spain.
They denied any wrongdoing.
Messi’s father has already assumed full responsibility for his son’s tax situation and the pair made a “corrective payment” of €5m to Spanish authorities last September.
Prosecutor Raquel Amado stated: “It is clear that Lionel A. Messi did not participate in the decisions on the management and destiny of his income nor was he aware of the reach, dimension, purpose or impact of the structure of the holding (to avoid taxes),”
The income related to Messi’s image rights reportedly included contracts with Banco Sabadell, Danone, Adidas, Pepsi-Cola, Proctor and Gamble, and the Kuwait Food Company.
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