Ronaldo Accused of Tax Fraud

Ronaldo Accused of Tax Fraud

Superstar football player Cristiano Ronaldo for Real Madrid has been accused by a Spanish state prosecutor of defrauding Spain’s tax office of $16.5 million.  According to Madrid’s regional state prosecutor, Ronaldo is accused of four counts of tax fraud from 2011 to 2014 for a total of 14.7 million euros in unpaid taxes.

Spain which is still recovering from an economic crisis that took place a decade ago is not happy with tax evaders and concerning Ronaldo said that he “took advantage of a business structure created in 2010 to hide from fiscal authorities income generated in Spain from image rights” by using a shell company located in the Virgin Islands to hide his total income from Spain.

A total of $31.8 million earned from the use of his image was not declared to Spain’s Tax Office.

In addition, Ronaldo is accused of falsely declaring $12.8 million in earnings for the 2011-2014 tax period while in fact he had earned $48 million during that period of time.

Ronaldo, who is the highest paid athlete in the world of course denied the accusations and had previously state that he was up to date on his taxes.

according to this sports betting software website, Spain has been cracking down on several high profiled football players of late for tax fraud which include Barcelona forward, Lionel Mesi who had been found guilty of using companies in Belize and Uruguay to avoid paying taxes.