Cristiano Ronaldo to pay $21 million
fine over tax fraud
International footballer icon
Cristiano Ronaldo has signed an agreement to pay $21.6 million in fines after
he pleaded guilty to tax fraud in a Madrid court on Tuesday.
The Portuguese striker, 33, now playing
in Italy for Juventus, faced tax prevention charges from his time as a player
in Spain at Real Madrid. The public prosecutor had accused Ronaldo of tax fraud
from 2011 to 2014 worth around $16.7 million, the prosecutor confirmed to ABC
News.
The court also gave him a two-year adjourned
sentence, but under Spanish law, this means he will not face jail time.
Ronaldo seemed calm and collected
outside the Madrid court. He signed autographs for fans and smiled at photographers
and journalists alongside his girlfriend, Georgina Rodriguez.
He is
the third richest athlete in the world, according to Forbes, with a
total annual income of $108 million each year.
Cristiano Ronaldo is widely considered
to be one of the best football player in the world and one of the best of all
time, having scored nearly 600 goals throughout his career for Manchester
United, Real Madrid and his current team, Juventus.
His rival Lionel Messi, a fellow Ballon
D'or winner, has also fallen foul of Spanish tax avoidance authorities. Messi
was handed a 21-month suspended sentence, later shuttled to a fine, after being
found guilty of cheating the Spanish government of around $4.5 million in 2016,
according to the BBC.
The
recent convictions of the high profile football players are due to the deduction
of a tax exemption for players, according to the BBC. This is not the first
run-in between Ronaldo and legal authorities in recent times.
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